Wedding Favors

The history of wedding favors is a long and amazing one. After all, everyone knows what a wedding favor is. If you have ever been a guest at a wedding, you more than likely left with some kind of wedding gift or keepsake at the wedding reception table. This is known as a favor. There are many types of unique wedding favor ideas out there, which can include everything from toasting glasses to special personalized favors with the happy couple's name engraved on it.

Coming up with wedding favor ideas is not like coming up with something like bridal shower ideas. Although they are both related to weddings, they both have two different meanings. Of course, this brings up the question, why are you presented with a gift if you are not the person who is getting married? Well this has to do with the history of how they came to be!

Back in the day (which in this case means many centuries ago), in places like Italy and France, people who were having a wedding would send their guests home with a small gift that was (in that day) called a Bonbonniere. However, it's very important to note that at that time these where not just given out at weddings. They were given out at almost any kind of celebration that you invited people to, like a birthday party. Now, what a Bonbonniere really was, was a favor box that was made out of something like crystal or some kind of stone, and inside you would find great things that were usually made out of sugar. It's very easy to see how wedding favor ideas were derived from these gift wrapped boxes.

So why was the Bonbonniere given out in the first place? Well, things like weddings, back in the day, were considered lucky. The thought was that if the bride and groom would pass out gifts to the guests, it would somehow include them in the luck as well. Back then, the most common type of wedding favors that were given out were actually five pieces of sugar coated almonds.

These almonds were supposed to show luck for wealth, happiness, fertility, health, and a long life. At many weddings this tradition is kept alive as being one of the best wedding favor ideas. You can get little bags of almonds that are now candy coated, kind of like M&M's. They come in all different kinds of colors and are even sometimes used for bridal shower ideas. Candies and small dollar shop items make for great cheap wedding favors for guests at the reception.

It should come at no shock that in different places of the world there are unique wedding favors. A wedding favor that is given out in some of these places has a lot more meaning behind it than what our wedding favors mean. For example, if you go to a Spanish wedding, you will more than likely leave with a vase filled with orange blossoms. This is very customary and is seen even in the United States today. All in all, there are a lot of different and unique wedding favor ideas out there in the world, and it is cool to try and include some of them in your lives.