Fan-tastic Favors

I am obsessed with wedding favors. They're are definitely not necessary, especially since you (well, your parents) just provided free food, entertainment and drinks for guests. But I think they're a cute touch and, speaking from a guest standpoint, I love free stuff. I stock up on free T-shirts at any giveaway I can and I was always thrilled to get a party favor bag at the end of birthday celebrations in elementary school. That's just how I roll.
So favors were definitely a detail I wanted to incorporate into the wedding. I wanted them to go with the vintage garden theme but I also didn't have a lot of money to spend. I changed my mind a lot--first I decided to go with seed packets, but couldn't find cute ones and wasn't willing to make them myself. I had already decided to order fans for guests to use during the outdoor ceremony, but it took me many months to realize that these could double as practical favors, too. Oh simplicity.

Of course there was a debate (in my head) as to whether to order paper or sandalwood fans but my friend Alex McA, a ballet dancer, had used sandalwood in her performances before and said they were good quality and really cheap. So, I took her advice and couldn't have been more pleased--the fans weren't flimsy at all and they smelled good too. I had even ordered favor tags to tie onto the end, but these fans came with a white tassel that looked nice on its own I didn't bother. I got mine from Favor Favor.

They also made for cute decoration (they were in baskets with a yellow and white checked fabric square) but I'm not sure if anyone got a picture of that. Best 59 cents I ever spent (120 times).

We used them at the rehearsal:

The lovely ladies. Please disregard the fact that my brother, Brandon, appears to be pouting in the background.

Guests used them at the wedding:

Well one guest did.

Mom and Steve fanned:

Ashley fanned Brandon:

Brandon fanned Ashley:

I fanned, she fanned, he fanned, everyone fanned! Should I be ashamed that I wrote so much about fans? I did spent an embarrassing amount of time before the wedding thinking about them, so whatev. And I have four in my purse.

What did you do for affordable wedding favors? Or did you have them at all? My friend Lexi is getting married in March and is in the market for some good ideas, so suggestions are welcome!

Downloading a New Leaf

Recently, during an intense, wedding-frenzy Google search, I stumbled upon the wonderful world of free templates. All kinds of templates for things like do-it-yourself matchbooks, favors, everything. My favorite find so far? (Besides the realization that people, seriously, refer to save-the-dates as std's, which was very confusing for the 20 seconds it took me to figure out.)

This adorable, budget-friendly save-the-date template:

Source

Inspired (obviously) by this book:

Source

So cute! Just download the font and template here, plug in your wedding info, print and mail. The creator only asks that you comment so he knows how far his design has gone.

This STD (hehe) was perfect for our summer wedding, since the actual ceremony will take place under a tree and we have a whole "New Leaf" theme going on in general. We had toyed (by toyed, we went as far as to personalize the invites, have a designer friend add some color and then abandon the project when it came time to pick paper) and were still toying with the idea of sending them out. But about three months from the wedding date, I decided to set my paper-product-loving sights on something more important: the invitation.

But, if we had a little more time, I totally would have sent these out!

Here are some other cute wedding templates. All photos are from Martha Stewart Weddings, as Martha Stewart rules (she even came out with an adorable doggie line of products).