Favor Them!

Hi again. So, I guess it’s no secret that weddings with a theme are hot. (As in, somewhere beachy.) Or not hot (as in, say, underwater.) That last theme is not too common. The first theme has become so common that it’s almost passé. Destination weddings, however, rage on, popular as ever! A themed wedding doesn’t have to mean airline tickets for everyone, of course. You can have a themed wedding right in your old hometown.

The reason themed weddings are on the mind… we were thinking about favors. Wedding favors. Puh-LEASE make these something people can use. I mean, you can buy anything, ANYthing for wedding favors, but a household can only use so many mints. And matchbooks. If you ARE flying everyone to some exotic location to say your “I Do’s”, a neat wedding favor is a luggage tag. In a fun way it announces your destination (which means, give ‘em to your guests AHEAD of the big day), and presumably your favors will be left on those bags to provide a fond memory for years to come whenever said guests are heading off somewhere.

I’ve never understood napkins with the bride and groom’s names and date. Only the very most sentimental wedding guest, the one who keeps scrapbooks on EVERYthing, will take such a napkin home. Everyone else wipes their mouths on them. Really?? And from the guest’s perspective, wiping your mouth on something stiff enough to get gold lettering onto — thus also onto the gold lettering…Well, it just seems wrong.

Koozies (or however that’s spelled) have become popular as wedding favors. OK, maybe. If you want to carry your can around with a couple’s name and wedding date on it. Isn’t that somehow incongruous? Either you wrap your drink in a Koozie that advertises some business or place or has some cheeky saying on it to announce your attitude to the world; or you cherish the memory of that beautiful wedding. Cherishing it while you chug… I dunno.

A wedding favor that seems to pop up a lot in 2017 is the bottle opener. I like this. Opening a bottle of soda or beer is a pleasant anticipatory experience: it’s a nice place to remind folks of the pleasant anticipatory experience that was your tying of the proverbial knot. You can get bottle openers in just about ANY theme—even inexpensive credit-card-style versions.

Which brings us back to wedding themes. I would like to see a craft beer-themed wedding. You and your honey enjoy microbrewery-hopping? Work it into your wedding. Have I thought this out? No. I’ll leave that fun to you!