Wedding Planning|Wedding Planning & Wedding Advice

Here are some great ideas for wedding favors that you can make yourself! A great way to set your wedding apart from the rest – when you make your own favors they can be truly unique and customized to your character as a wedding couple. You can also save a lot of money!

Sweet Deals

Check online for stores that sell wholesale chocolate and buy your candy favors in bulk. For example, you can get a 6 pound box of delicious almond bark at candywarehouse.com. Available in white, dark, or milk chocolate – if you need more than one box, mix it up so that you can offer a selection to each guest.

You can buy favor bags and boxes online as well, or check out your local dollar store, craft store, or discount department store for sales. Sandscripts.com offers a wide variety of fabric bags, gift bags, and gift boxes. You can also order customized ribbon for your event for a very reasonable price.

Cookie Cutter Wedding

Another idea – invite a few of your friends over for a cookie crafternoon. Bake the cookies beforehand if possible, and then get together to decorate and package the goods with your friend (ask them to bring over some bottles of wine to get the creative juices really flowing). Check out sweetopia for instructions for these beautiful butterfly cookies, as well as lots of general tips and links to other online resources for cookie decoration.

If you’re not confident about your cookie skills – bake and decorate simple cookies instead and then focus on presentation, instead.

Or, buy cookie cutters in bulk, attach your favorite recipe and your wedding date with a beautiful ribbon, and you’re done (no baking required!). Tip: buy the cookie cutters from an online cookie cutter store rather than a specialty wedding store for better prices! Check out cookiecutter.com for lots of options: flowers for a spring wedding, hearts, brides and grooms, etc.

It all started with a previous post, “Fairy Tale Weddings Part 2” and this image of a wedding cake topper of a bride and groom on a tandem bike:

Since then, I’ve received so many questions about where to buy this tandem bicycle wedding cake topper! The problem is, while I found the image in a few different places online – no one had credited it with a source so I have no idea where you can buy one! I just tried again and still, no luck, but I did find some appealing alternatives:

Vintage Style

This bicycle built for two is handmade in France. It is only 2.5″ tall so may not be appropriate for all cakes (it would still make a great gift if the newlyweds are bicycle enthusiasts). You can purchase it online at fancyflours.com (based out of Montana).

fancyflours.com

Motorcycle

For motorcycle enthusiasts, a hand painted porcelain topper:

weddingdesigner.com

Personalized

You can order personalized figurines to top your cake from magicmud.com (based out of Toronto, Canada). These wedding cake toppers can include lots of details unique to the wedding couple, including pets.

magicmud.com

Happy Trails

For the mountain biking couple, you can buy this cake topper at ebay (for the next 23 days). If it’s not still there, contact the seller (maybe she has more?).

Built For Two, Just For You

I have also found an Etsy member who will build you a custom made tandem bicycle like the one below. You can contact her through her Etsy store.

qtiff at etsy

Inspiration

If you’d like to incorporate your love for pedals, spokes, and all things bicycle into your wedding – I have found some great examples during my search for the elusive wedding cake topper…

Go to “Handmade Weddings: A Last-Minute Article About My Last-Minute Wedding” for details about two Etsy employees who celebrate their wedding surrounded by friends, bicycles, and paper airplanes.

etsy.com

Or, read “A Handmade American Wedding” - writer Katie’s account of her sister’s wedding. The couple saved up all summer to buy a tandem bike as their wedding gift to each other – and used it to get from the church to the reception!

www.makingthishome.com