A Flipside to Wedding Favors

I have a fondness for tchotchkes that dates back to my elementary school years: my enthusiasm for carnival and cake walk prizes was unsurpassed (I was also quite a competitive little bugger). It's no surprise then that I look forward to seeing what the bride and groom's wedding favors are! Double happiness candles? Score. A pair of porcelain love birds? Awesome. A bookmark with the bride and groom's photo on it? Still use it to this day. However, when it came to our own wedding, I was conscious that a good percentage of our guests are of the "WTF do I do with this?" persuasion. I started researching alternatives to traditional wedding favors and quickly gravitated towards a slew of edible alternatives. S'mores, anyone?

  Image via Twig & Thistle

These "cowgirl cookie" kits make for some mouthwatering gifts. I received a variation of one for Christmas a couple years ago, and it was de-lish!

Image via Bakerella 

Who wouldn't want to get a chocolate chip cookie the size of your face? I'll take two!

Image via Intimate Weddings

Homemade jams are simply scrump-diddly-umptious!

 

Image via Weddingbee / Photo by Miss Cinnamon Buns

Because the Tartlets love to bake, the edible favor route was incredibly appealing for adding a personal touch to the wedding. However, another idea took hold because so many of our guests have ties to the University of Michigan: we're donating books to the Giving Library at the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital.

The Giving Library is a cart stocked with new books, and every Monday through Thursday volunteers at the hospital visit the bedside of each patient with the cart in tow. Mr. Tartlet and I both used to disappear into books when we were kids (I still do), and loved the idea of giving patients and their families a diversion from the stresses of hospitalization. The best part is that when a patient chooses a book out of the Giving Library, it's for keeps! To personalize the donation, we placed a sticker on the inside cover that commemorated our wedding and also the guest(s) for whom we are donating the book. Mr. Tartlet remembers that his brother enjoyed reading "One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish," so we chose to gift that book on his behalf:

As much as we could, we tried to select books that held meaning to the people whose names we were writing inside:

Mama Tartlet's favorite book to quote--even now--is "The Little Engine That Could." BM Tanya's pick was "The Lorax," and Brother Tartlet used to read "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble" until the pages were quite dog-eared.

When we couldn't donate a specific book for a guest, we just went with books that we enjoyed reading ourselves:

Are you giving out favors at your wedding? I'd love to hear what your favorite childhood reads were!