10 Unique Wedding Favours

Wedding Favours

Wedding favours are small gifts traditionally given to wedding guests by the happy couple. They’re a little thank you to your nearest and dearest for their attendance at your wedding celebration, and are a timeless wedding tradition. Usually given out after the wedding reception or placed on table settings, wedding favours can be edible or functional, commemorative or decorative, and there are plenty of options to choose from.

We’ve put together a list of more unique wedding favour ideas – thoughtful tokens that your guests will cherish and appreciate. The best wedding favours are those that are practical or meaningful, and our carefully curated list includes a variety of gifts for wedding favours that your nearest and dearest will adore.

1.        Personalised Drinkware

Personalised wedding favours are gorgeous mementos of an unforgettable day and are often indicative of the interests of the wedding couple. One of our favourite unique wedding favours is a personalised mug. These can be ordered in advance with the wedding date, venue and a personal message or photo on as a thank you.

Placed on every setting, personalised mugs can even contain a mini hot chocolate kit or small bag of tea or coffee for the guests to enjoy after the wedding. Personalised shot glasses are also cute and can be used during the wedding toasts to take a tipple with the rest of the wedding party. Personalised drinkware is both fun and functional and something to remember a special day by. It’s also relatively inexpensive and can be arranged well in advance of the wedding day.

2.        Seed Packets

Unassuming yet super thoughtful, a small packet of seeds, personalised or not, is a lovely token of appreciation that endures well after the wedding day. Packets of herb seeds, sunflowers, wildflowers or tree seeds can be easily planted in pots and gardens as a lasting reminder of a wonderful wedding. You don’t need to be green fingered to plant seeds and a little paper packet with a personal message of thanks fits perfectly in a pocket or clutch to be found and remembered with a smile afterwards. 

3.        DIY Wedding Favours

DIY wedding favours range from homemade goodies like wedding favour biscuits, individually wrapped, to chocolate wedding favours, like homemade truffles, sweets, cookies and fudge. Many of these can be batch cooked and frozen in advance of the wedding and when presented in small wedding boxes or muslin bags, are a much-appreciated sweet treat to enjoy on the day.

Making something yourself shows your guests that you care about them and offers them a little treat to take home. Other edible wedding favours include homemade infused oils, spirits and sauces – all of which are both thoughtful and unique, making them special wedding favours. This is a relatively inexpensive wedding favour and a great option for high impact low cost wedding favours for couples on a budget.  

4.        Mini Plants

Mini plants like cacti, succulents or little ferns make fantastically unusual wedding favours. When presented on table settings, they add a lovely touch of green to your wedding reception and can be taken home afterwards. Succulents are particularly easy to care for and hard to kill. If giving cacti plants, ensure they are in a little container or paper bag if they have sharp thorns, or pick softer cacti that won’t catch anyone’s wedding outfit.

You can buy trays of mini plants in pots from garden centres, through plant wholesalers, or you can even pot them up yourself from cuttings, if you’re good with plants.

5.        LEGO® Wedding Favours

Another idea for unique wedding favours are LEGO® wedding favours. Presented in an iconic square box representative of those familiar little building blocks, LEGO® fans will enjoy the brightly coloured favour boxes you can buy and fill with jellybeans, sweets and chocolates.

If LEGO® is your thing, you can incorporate more of it into your wedding with hair pins, flowers, bow ties, jewellery and cake toppers made from colourful building blocks that’ll make your guests double take.

These are not the cheapest wedding favours but they’re super fun and very eye-catching.

6.        Temporary Tattoos

Wedding favours ideas don’t have to cost a fortune. A fun, simple way of entertaining your wedding guests, that is cheap and doubles as a favour, are little temporary tattoos. Pop some saucers of water and small sponges on your reception tables and give every guest some transfers to play with. You’ll have some awesome photos afterwards!

Temporary tattoos take you back to your childhood and are guaranteed to entertain guests of all ages. Choose transfer designs that match your wedding theme, custom tattoos of your faces or glam foil tattoos and make sure everyone visits the photo booth afterwards to capture cute lasting memories.

7.        Charity Wedding Favours

If there’s a good cause that’s close to your heart, why not go for charity wedding favours instead of whimsical ones. Large national charities offer personalised wedding favour cards that you can print yourself and add a message to, telling your guests about the donation you’ve made on their behalf. Charity pins wedding favours are another way of supporting important causes, as are charity badges, charity petal confetti packets and seed sticks.

Both Cancer Research wedding favours range and Macmillan wedding favours offer lots of options online that range in price, and make considerate and special wedding favours for your cherished guests.

8.        Wedding Games

Back to more entertaining wedding favours, games, jigsaws and challenges are great fidgets for wedding guests that can be taken home as keepsakes afterwards. Personalised jigsaws or little puzzles and mini party games can be designed to match your wedding theme and bulk ordered as unique wedding favours that’ll keep your guests entertained.

Themed or personalised playing cards are another good idea and ideal for guests who can’t, or won’t, dance later on.

9.        Scratch Card Wedding Favours

A fab idea for a cheap and cheerful wedding favour – scratch cards! Either buy them from your local newsagent or supermarket, or go one step further and design personalised scratch cards. Particularly good fun, especially if one of your guests wins a prize, scratch cards are simultaneously old-fashioned and fun to try, whether you’re into gambling or not. Everyone loves the chance of a freebie, and your guests will be no exception.

If you’re feeling flush, grab Euro Millions lottery tickets or if you’re on a budget stick to £1 scratchies from a reel at your local shop. It’s worth noting you can only buy 10 National Lottery scratch cards at once, but there is no limit on others.

10.   Tote Bags

The last of our favour ideas for weddings are custom tote bags. For the ultimate functional wedding favour, tote bags are perfect for taking wedding cake home, leftovers, gifted table decorations, high heels or surplus outerwear.

You can design beautiful tote bags to match your wedding theme or have a favourite picture or message printed on the side. Every time a wedding guest takes their bag shopping, they’ll remember your special day fondly.

Top Tips

In addition to our suggestions for wedding favours, we’ve popped some top tips below to help you plan the perfect wedding favours for your favourite people.

Theme

It’s likely you won’t start thinking about favour ideas for a wedding until you’ve booked your wedding venue and you’re already well into the wedding planning process. Make sure your favours match your theme, either in colour, type or material. That way, once they have been presented, they’ll tie in nicely with your wedding reception setting enhancing the overall effect.

Presentation

Think about how you want to give out your wedding favours. Do you want to wait until guests leave? In which case, are you going to have to catch everyone at the door? Or would you rather present them on tables? This way you won’t have to manually hand them out, but you can make sure you have enough. Alternatively, you could have a favours table for people to help themselves, but you may have to keep a contingency stash, particularly if your favours are highly sought-after!

Budgeting

Your wedding favours ideas don’t have to break the bank. Whatever wedding budget you’re working to you can create thoughtful favours that will be appreciated. DIY wedding favours are great for those on a shoestring budget or go for personalised wedding favours if you have more time and money to spend. Either way, don’t forget it’s the thought that counts.

Weddings at Springbank Manor

Choose Springbank Manor for your wedding and we'll create bespoke gin favours for your wedding guests made right here at our very own gin distillery! You can find out more about our Whitehall Gin Distillery here.

Our gorgeous wedding venue in Lancashire is surrounded by wide open space, rolling countryside and extensive gardens, offering a stunning setting for any wedding. We offer every couple a dedicated wedding coordinator to help you map out your wedding day, find suppliers and ensure that everything goes according to plan.

For an easily accessible, fully inclusive wedding venue for weddings of all shapes and sizes, look no further than Springbank Manor. We LOVE unique wedding favour ideas, and unique weddings in general, and can’t wait to hear from you!