Wedding Favours: What Actually Stays With the Guest

Wedding favours are a large budget line spent on something forgotten within two days. The right question is not which favour is prettiest, but what will still be with the guest a week later. In most cases the answer is not a small box.

Three budget levels

• Simple. Dates or chocolate in a neat box with a small thank-you card. Always acceptable and never offends.
• Mid range. A small perfume, incense or a candle, which is the category most often actually used afterwards.
• Luxury. A hand-wrapped gift, suitable for a limited number only, or it swallows a third of the wedding budget.

The rule that saves real money

Do not base the favour count on the number invited. Base it on the number who confirmed. The gap is usually about a third, and that gap is real money spent on boxes that stay in their cartons. To know the real number before the night, you need an invitation with a confirm button, not a flat image.

The favour nobody throws away

Ask what the guest actually wants after the wedding. In most cases the answer is the same: his photos. People ask about photos for days afterwards and never ask about the favour. That is the idea behind the Pro Gallery smart gallery: after the event each guest receives only his own photos, automatically, with nobody sorting through thousands of frames.

It costs less than a box of chocolates per guest, and it stays on their phone for years.

The favour card

If you include a card with the favour, keep it short and use the same colour as the invitation, so the guest feels the occasion was considered from start to finish. Adding a code that takes them to their photos is the smartest way to tie the favour to the memory.

If you are still preparing the invitation itself, start from the wedding invitation design guide.

Give guests something they keep

Before you raise the favour budget, try delivering every guest their own photos after the night. Start with Pro Gallery here.