DIY - The Welcome Bag

The welcome bag is an esstenial for destinations weddings or when inviting out of town guests to your wedding. These bags give you the oppoortunity to supply your guest with an itinerary of events occuring throughout the duration of the wedding celebration, provides phone numbers of designated people in case of emergency or questions and gives them a list of local attractions to visit when they have some down time. You can also add a favor into your welcome bag. For example, if your having your wedding at a vineyard you can include wine bottle stoppers in your welcome bags.

Custom welcome bags can become expensive when most vendors are asking you to at least purchase 250+ bags from them plus you have to pay a plate charge for them to make your message custom for your bags. Here are a few tips to help you purchase at a minimal cost or DIY. To purchase at a minimal cost look for companies who sell welcome bags with a set of pre-determined templates. Usually a company will offer you about 5 to 6 templates to choose from and you can just give them the specifics in terms of your name & wedding date. This works out to be cheaper for you because the vendor is not creating a whole new template they are just adding your information to it. The Budget Brides Handbook Shop is currently offering a 10% discount on all purchases off welcome bags when you use promo code 3512TEN from now till October 31st.

You can also create your own welcome bags. Here are the following items that you will need.

Paper Shopping Bag
Sticker with you and your fiance's name on it including the wedding date
(you can also opt to use a design)
Ribbon (Color theme of wedding)
Favor
Itinerary
Emergency numbers

Info on Local Attractions & Maps

Paper Bags: A good place to purchase your paper bags is http://www.nashvillewraps.com/

Stickers: From Rhinestone Monogram Stickers to Personalized Labels & Tags http://www.weddingfavorites.com/ is a good place to start looking

See Below for suggestions on paper, maps and favors.

For the itinerary and emergency phone number cards you can go to your local stationary store or online store and purchase sheets of cardstock paper so that you can create these items at home. Kate's Paperie & Papyrus here in NYC are both havens for brides who are looking for paper for their special day.

You can also purchase travel maps for your out of town guests so they can navigate their way around the city you choose to celebrate your special day. Emapstore.com and maps.com are 2 websites where I have found maps starting at $4.95 & up. Another way of cutting costs is to ask the hotel that you have chosen for your guest to stay in if they will provide maps free of charge for your guests. Sometimes the front desk of many hotels will have maps to help there guest when they have travel questions.

Lastly, the welcome bag favor should be something small and relate to the theme of your wedding. Having a winter wedding place a snowflake bookmark or coffee cup candles in the bag to represent the time of the year. You can find tons of favors for your Welcome Bag at The Budget Brides Handbook Shop.

Questions: Email me at info@thebudgetbrideshandbook.com