Ideas for Great Out of Town Gift Bags

If you’ve got a lot of out of town guests coming to your wedding, you’ll want to thank them for the effort they made to be there by providing gift baskets. These don’t have to be elaborate or expensive. I used pre-decorated hat boxes bought at the craft store, lined them with pretty tissue paper, and filled them with little goodies like candy bars, playing cards, bottled water, a map of the area, bags of microwave popcorn, and so on. I also added information about the wedding festivities and directions to all the venues. It was easy and didn’t cost much at all. The hotel where your guests will be staying will be happy to place them in their rooms so they will be waiting for them when they check in. Miss Bubblegum over at WeddingBee.com had some great ideas for her guest baskets:

The information packet was a lot harder to get than I thought it would be. We contacted the Old Orchard Beach Chamber of Commerce, and they said they wouldn’t send anything in bulk because it would cost them too much money. Hm, no fair. All the other bees got free area info. We even tried contacting the hotels where we have rooms blocked, but they said the Chamber of Commerce hadn’t even given them their shipment yet. Again, boo. So in the end, we ended up just downloading important information from their website and making copies. Our information packet included:
-A letter from us thanking our guests for coming.
-A schedule of events for the weekend.
-The phone numbers of taxi companies in the area.
-Our phone numbers.
-Directions.
-A fancy map.
-A list of area restaurants.
-A list of area activities.
-A crossword about us

Read the rest of this great post here. You can use just about anything for your gift offering-baskets, canvas tote bags, hat boxes, even small trunks. For a beach wedding, how about a plastic pail or even a small lobster trap? Or for a garden wedding try a terracotta pot. Use your imagination and have fun with it! Have some ideas of your own or questions about putting them together? Drop us a line!