Katy Hofstede-Smith shows why shop-bought wedding favours aren’t always best…
With so many couples wanting to embrace a more traditional, simple and low key style of wedding these days there are so many things you can do yourself to add a beautiful handmade touch to the day. One of the easiest ways is by making your own wedding favours. Traditionally given as a way of thanking guests and featuring sugar to show wealth and status, the choice of 5 sugared almonds symbolising fertility, longevity, wealth, health and happiness has been the custom for several centuries. Nowadays the world of favours extends to just about anything designed to fit in to whatever theme you may choose, however unusual, however if you want to bring in an element of yourselves and show your guests how grateful you are for their company there are some lovely homemade ideas that you can try.
Everyone likes something sweet and there are many variations on this theme that you can use. Homemade traditional sweets such as fudge, toffee, peppermint creams, coconut ice or marshmallows look great and can be designed to fit in with your colour scheme.
Chocolates – either truffles or moulded into shapes such as your initials, hearts or lips – never fail, or for a slightly more unusual approach, try making miniature individual chocolate blocks sprinkled with edible flowers, freeze-dried fruit or an edible glitter in your wedding colours.
Biscuits or individual cupcakes can be decorated to create a talking point, show some of your personality or your story or simply to look beautiful.
Make small jars of your favourite jam, chutney, curd or caramel sauce.
Keeping to the traditional almond favour you could try something a little more unusual and give guests either spiced almonds roasted at home in your choice of flavours or a praline-style sweet version.
If your wedding has a seasonal theme try to tie it in: for example, by creating mini toffee apples using small twigs for the stick for an autumn wedding, personalised mulling spices for a winter wedding, home-harvested seeds for a spring wedding or chocolate-dipped strawberries for summer.
If you have a particular passion this can also be a good source of inspiration; jars of un-popped corn, flavoured oils, bespoke cocktails, homemade scented bath salts or your very own sour dough starter are just a few examples.
With all of these ideas the packaging is the key to making it look lovely and tie in. Think little jars, bottles, boxes, brown paper sachets, vintage fabrics and ribbons, along with personalised tags, labels or cards to thank your guests and give some story to the more unusual items.