DIY Project: Welcome Bags

Our Wedding Welcome Bag

My Mom is a gift basket-maker by trade. She makes creative, beautiful gift baskets for charity raffles, first-time home owners, wedding gift bags & more. Give her a theme & she churns out a perfectly-themed gift basket. By the time we tackled our wedding welcome bags, we had less than one week to the wedding & a never-ending to-do list. We never considered skipping the welcome bags because we still wanted gift bags to greet our guests at the hotel & provide them with information & treats. We had to make welcome bags & keep our sanity intact. My Mom was probably a tad disappointed when I told her the theme for our welcome bags was "simple."

But she went with the flow as she realized I may have a meltdown otherwise & we kept it simple. The basic idea was a plain bag decorated with our leftover "Greetings from Hoboken" save-the-date postcards tied with an easy bow & filled with a welcome letter, wedding itinerary & plentiful snacks. We snagged glossy, white bags & white grosgrain ribbon for an awesome price at AC Moore. We went to Sam's Club & grabbed anything & everything that looked good- water, apples, granola bars, cookies, pretzels, chips, etc- also for a reasonable price. We bought white paper decorated with silver swirls at Staples. I had already collected Love mints & wedding tissues.

Thank goodness this project was not so much DIY as DIT- do it together. While I worked on the letter & itinerary with our painfully-slow printer, my Mom & cousin/bridesmaid worked the bag assembly line. I can't thank them enough for their valuable support & help! Each had to be tagged with the postcard, hole-punched for the ribbon, stuffed with the treats & information &, finally, tied with a bow. Between the shopping, the assembly & the delivery, this DIY project ate a lot of time. Quite a project even on a simple scale!

The hardworking welcome bag team

Yes, I wrote "Welcome" on every treat

The tagged welcome bags waiting to be finished

The welcome bags may not have been as fancy as my Mom would have liked but I thought they were just perfect. With the "Greetings From Hoboken" postcard, they managed to perfectly welcome the guests to our beloved home & carry through our hometown theme. Plus they looked cute & simple, they were filled with yummy snacks & they had pertinent information. What more could you ask for from a welcome bag?! RZ & I delivered them to the hotel on Friday afternoon to be placed in each of our out-of-town guests' hotel rooms as a hearty welcome to our wedding weekend. The fun was just beginning!

The finished product- I loved them!

Our Greetings from Hoboken, Part Two

The front & back of our save-the-date invitations

A blurry close-up of our save-the-date wording
(my sincere apologies for my poor camera skills!)

Way back when, I promised to show you the flip side of our save-the-date invitations. Did you think I'd forgotten?! Of course not. Today is the day!

I'm a huge fan of short & sweet & our save-the-date invitations were no exception. I felt it was important to convey a few, key details to our wedding guests: our wedding date, our wedding web site & our names. From those basic details, our wedding guests are armed with any & all information they need. I kept the look clean, yet fun, with two fonts in black ink. To add a little spice, I penned the phrase "We would be honored to have the pleasure of your company when we're declared husband & wife."

We couldn't have been happier with our save-the-date invitations. They're simple, cute & informative- what a winning combo, if I do say so myself.


Now we're setting our sights on our wedding invitations . . . wow!

Our Greetings from Hoboken, Part One

Our save-the-dates lined up like colorful soldiers
They're ready to be mailed!

And away they go!

Remember that I told you our save-the-date invitations had been seen on this blog before? Here's the full story!

When it came to inspiration for our save-the-date invitations, it turned out I had to look no further than our guest bedroom. Over the daybed, we have a framed "Greetings from Hoboken" poster because we love our hometown so much. The poster proudly features the Hoboken waterfront & each letter showcases a local historical building. We decided to have our marriage ceremony in Hoboken & the save-the-date decision was easily made. What was the best way to give our wedding guests the wedding information & a sense of place? Greetings from Hoboken postcards!

My original idea was to print & stick save-the-date labels on the back of the postcard. RZ hated the idea! He insisted our save-the-date information be printed directly on the postcard. Wondering if I had possibly lost my mind, I emailed the Greetings from Hoboken artist, Raymond Smith, & asked him if he would print our save-the-date information. Thankfully, Raymond didn't think I was crazy & he happily accepted to print the postcards. He was a delight to work with from start to finish. I had written the copy with the basic information of our names, our wedding date & our wedding web site. He helped with picking fonts, making the layout, etc. He patiently showed me previous examples, made mock-ups for us to choose from & delivered us the best save-the-date postcards!!

For any Hobokenite couples, I highly recommend working with Raymond for save-the-dates, out-of-town gift basket tags &/or thank you cards. We're getting rave reviews from our wedding guests &, most importantly, we love our save-the dates!

Coming Soon: Part Two will reveal the other side of our save-the-date postcard!!