The giving of wedding favors is a long established custom. For many years it has been traditional for a small, personalized gift to be given to each of the wedding guests as a token of thanks from the bride and groom. This also serves as a memento of the happy occasion and can be kept as a keepsake by the guests. In the past one of the more usual wedding favors has been a small and elegantly wrapped gift of sugared nuts. More popular these days is to give wine bottle wedding favors.
Many companies have established an agreement with the bottlers of wines, and sometimes spirits, to purchase individual serving bottles without labels. They can then print their own labels according to the bride and grooms request and provide these wine bottles as wedding favors. The type of wine can be specified by the couple and the labels chosen from a selection and then personalized.
Although it may sound like a very expensive gift when you bear in mind the number of guests that may be attending the wedding reception, they are actually quite affordable, especially if you would be supplying wine to accompany the meal anyway. If you give wine bottles as wedding favors the guests will have an individual bottle of wine to drink and then will be able to keep the personalized bottle as a keepsake and reminder of the day.
Most companies will give you a reasonable wine list to choose from. Take into consideration the menu that you will be serving and try to tailor your choice of wine to the meal. You may want to give people a choice of red or white wine or perhaps you will allow two bottles, one of each, per person. If you do decide to give both red and white to each guest it will mean that they can have one with their meal and take a full bottle home with them to keep.
Companies who produce wine bottle wedding favors will often also supply individual serving bottles of champagne. These make wonderful favors and can be used to toast the happy couple. The sound of a champagne bottle being opened is such a wonderful sound at a wedding; imagine lots of them being opened at the same time!
The labels for your bottles can be either designed by yourselves or, more often, chosen from a selection of templates and then personalized. As a rule you will have your names and the date of the marriage included and then a choice of other elements. Some will have space to include a photograph so you could use a photograph of your engagement for example. Another idea is to have the groom's family crest printed on the label. Companies that offer this usually offer the service of researching the heraldic crest and arranging the artwork for it. You would be wise to check what the crest looks like before agreeing to this. If you have never seen it before you may not want to wait until the day of the wedding to discover that you do not like your new heraldic emblem! Wine bottles as wedding favors do give tremendous scope when it comes to the labelling. Some people take a more humorous approach and have a comical logo on the bottle. Remember, however, something that you find amusing now may not be so funny in years to come when you look at your keepsakes. Often it is better to stick with a more traditional choice.
Whichever wine you choose and however you word the label, you can be sure that having wine bottles as wedding favors will be a hit with your guests and will be a romantic keepsake for years to come.
Gary Pearson is an accomplished niche website developer and author.
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