Fall wedding favors that are lit, sweet, and clean

Comments on Fall wedding favors that are lit, sweet, and clean

1. Fall bride here! Gettin’ hitched Oct. 12th (sweet Friday wedding!) in a park overlooking the ocean (crossing my fingers for People of the First Nations summer; the heat’s been so late in coming around these parts that I think I’m in luck). Our invitations are fall-leaves themed (Earthy Leaves from wedding paper divas–have gotten SO many compliments!)and our programs, matchbook favors, and cocktail napkins all have maple leaf images in copper. We’ve got orange dahlias, mango callas and dusty green succulents in the flowers for fall color, and tera cotta & olive green table cloths. Also going to carve a pumpkin or two with our initials for reception decor. Fall has always been my favorite season and I’m so excited I get to use all these gorgeous colors in our wedding.

   • OMG! All of that sounds fan-freaking-tastic. Especially the floral options.

2. Loving some of these decor ideas, and the pumpkin brownie balls look soooo good.

   Our wedding is late October, and we’re planning a Faerie Harvest theme. Instead of flowers, we’re mainly going to have deep colored gourds and pumpkins, as well as a lot of candles and little points of light. We’re going to take branches and wrap them around the pillars in our venue, then wire them with Christmas lights and hang silver faerie charms from them for the kids to take. As for favors, we’re going to be setting out big baskets of apples (that we’re going to pick, probably as a bridal/groom party excursion) that have tags on them.

   • Ooh love the apples idea, was going to do something similar for place cards til we decided to go appetizers-only instead. Your wedding sounds gorgeous!!

   • I adore your idea of wrapping the little lights on branches and then suspending those in your venue. That would be a great solution for our venue, to which we only have access on the day. Thanks for sharing the beautiful idea!

3. Wow, these are all lovely ideas, but we’re looking for something a little more DIY to bring down the cost. Some DIY projects cost more than getting something pre-fab, though. We’re getting married in October in a cozy cabin, and wanted “domestic favors” since we are both very homey folk. First we bought a ton of cutesy jelly jars and buckets of blackberries at the local farmers market, thinking it would be easy as pie to make a half-pint jar of jam for each and every of our 120 guests. HAH! Ever realize the seed-to-fruit content in a blackberry? You will after scarring your face with molten-hot pectin and pressing $20 of berries through a food mill only to yield all of three wee jars. It was a great learning experience and I’m sure we’ll can again if we ever morph into the brilliant gardeners we’d like to be, but we’ve admitted to ourselves what a bad match this project was for favors. Our total yield of 12 jars of jam will probably be earmarked as bridal party gifts.

   Now we’re considering scrolled 2013 almanacs from my hometown Mom ‘n Pop grocery store for our guests, maybe with a little nametag attached to each one. However, that’s still not really an ideal gift for guests as couples, since no couple really needs two almanac calendars in their home.

   As much as we’d like it to be DIY, like our invitations, we also know *any* craft is super hard to pull off 120 times in a row. Our budget is tight (who’s isn’t, it’s the RESESH!) and the custom of extending individual gifts to every guest after budgeting a certain price per head for food, hooch, venue cost, entertainment is a little hard for us to swallow. Still, we want to be gracious and have fun with it. With seven weeks to go we need more good ideas soon!

   • If we had more patience/space to do it/more time/more sanity/more craftiness, I would have loved to hand-dip some candles and give them as favors. You know, the ones that are two candles connected with one wick? Thought that would be very sweet, and symbolic.

     • That’s an awesome idea, Emily. And candles gifted in the fall would be soon used and appreciated over the holidays. Thanks for the tip!

   • The cider mix thing could work well, for apple cider or mulled wine. Find cotton/muslin bags, then make the mix yourself – buying in bulk at Costco or BJ’s. Maybe throw in a little scrap of paper with instructions. Here’s a mix recipe:
     http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Spiced-Apple-Cider-or-Wine-Mix-Food_com-88250?servings=150

   • I was recently at a wedding where they did a S’more favor… The tag said “Here’s s’more loving for you” or something along those lines… They wrapped 2 graham cracker squares, 2 rectangles of hersheys, and 1 marshmallow in cellophane… Thought it was super cute…and would be even better for a fall wedding!

4. October 7th here! 🙂 Can I get a link for the thumb-print tree?

   • Just click on the photo to get taken to ANY of the products featured.

   • We found our tree on etsy and my FH’s dad painted one for us… There’s a TON on there if you just search and each have a slightly different look to them… We’re using red, orange, yellow, green, and brown for the thumb prints. Also found a super slick bingo dauber that is ink remover at a scrapbook store (similar to an Archivers if you have those in your area). We did an example of our tree to make certain our 200+ fingerprints are going to work and are beyond excited by how amazing it looks!

5. Autumn bride here as well. We’re doing a wood disk (literally slices of a small tree trunk with bark still on) under an orange Moroccan lantern (they’re cheap on Amazon Prime!) with some real leaves, pine cones, and whatever else fall themed I can get my hands on for free or cheap. All together with electric lights it’s about $200 to decorate 20 tables. The table will have a dark brown table cloth and orange napkins so the colors will really pop!

6. October 13th here! We’re doing locally grown mums from the farm stand up the road in purple, orange, and green then placing them atop paper doilies on brown craft paper overlays. We’ll also be using some pumpkins, corn, and gourds for decoration. We’re doing caramel apples made with local apples for our favors and hopefully serving a homebrewed pumpkin ale!

7. October 13 also! We’re getting hitched on the beach in NC so we aren’t doing fall themed stuff but all of this stuff is amazing! Makes me wish a tiny bit we were doing a fall theme. My aunt is knitting me an amazing shawl in case it’s chilly out.

   • That is so cool. You’re going to treasure that shawl forever.

     • I know, I can’t wait to see it when I go back to my hometown for my shower in a few weeks! My mom also made shawls for all of my maids/matrons-of-awesomeness. My family rocks, is basically what I’m saying.

   • 9/24 bride here (yes, that is a Monday). My GROOM! crocheted a shawl for me. Can’t wait to wear it!

8. We’re planning our wedding for fall, but can I just say how sick I am of “fall wedding ideas” being nothing but leaves and pumpkins? There is more to fall than that! All kinds of gorgeous fruit in season (grapes, apples, pears, quince), perfect blue skies, yellow goldenrod in bloom, and colors in lime and sage green, yellow, everything from hot pink to deep red, and sky blue. Not just red and orange and brown!

   Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest – thank you for posting a few neat ideas that didn’t involve leaves or pumpkins, like those adorable pitchers and the hot cocoa bags. I had thought about doing something similar, but with mulling spices for cider or wine. We’ll see.

   • I totally agree! Our wedding is October 27th because my fiance and I always loved fall. We picked this lodge at a state park for the ceremony that has a cozy log cabin feel and there’s plenty of windows so we can see all the fall foliage. I get kind of tired of the acorns, leaves, and pumpkins that tend to be associated with fall weddings. I am making my own table runners with burlap. My main colors are cherry red and ivory, but I am using some yellow and orange too. I really love flowers so I am repurposing a lot of wine bottles and jars for decor and filling them with red flowers. My favors are actually wildflower seeds, and I made my own seed packets from scrapbook paper.

   • Agreed! Don’t get me wrong, I love all things pumpkin (and that fingerprint tree!), but for our wedding (10/9/13) we’re trying to go for a more expanded palette–think, in shorthand, Crayola Bold colors.

9. October 13th! Hoping for an outdoor ceremony by the river, medieval/rennaissance theme, with a bunch of other stuff that we are into as a couple.. I love autumn and the colours of the trees! We are Doing mini drums, for favours, my fiancé cut them out of 4″ diameter bamboo, I painted them with our monogram, and a native friend of ours will drum with a group for the procession. We also made wedding crackers filled with candies and jokes. I am doing the cake, which will have gumpaste cornucopia cake topper filled with gumpaste fruits, and i will be making a traditional Norwegian wedding cake as well, as he is Norwegian, it is called krumkake, and it happens to be gluten free, which is good for some of our guests. I can’t believe how fast it is approaching! I love all of the inspiring ideas, and I hope you all have a fabulous wedding!

   • I’m curious as to the recipe you’re using for krumkake, as I am gluten free and I’m looking for wedding cake alternatives. I did some cursory searching online but all the krumkake recipes I found contained flour…are you just replacing it with a gluten-free flour blend? Or is there a recipe that’s inherently gluten-free?

10. Hi everyone! Our wedding is October 5th and we’ll be incorporating some fall elements along with some rustic elements to tie into our farm venue. We’re decorating the walls of the barn with dried corn stalks between each window, we are using a tree display to hold
    our escort cards and are also doing the fingerprint tree as our guest book, centerpieces are going to be composed of all seasonal organically grown flowers (in galvanized pails with table numbers stamped onto burlap affixed to them) including sunflowers, and our favors will be caramel apples we will be making ourselves (we take one home each year on our annual pumpkin picking trip, which was the inspiration for the whole wedding, so we wanted our guests to have that same experience). For our save the dates, we carved our initials into a heart on a pumpkin and photographed it on a beautiful bed of fall leaves (last Nov). Food wise, our dinner is being served by food trucks, but each table will have a cheese plate before hand that will include spiced nuts with rosemary cayenne and brown sugar, fig jam, and hopefully butternut squash oil, all of which are very fall! For dessert we will be having 4 varieties of seasonal pies, including of course apple and pumpkin, and ice cream sandwiches from a truck that is giving us a choice of 5 varieties of cookies and 7 varieties of ice cream, one of which will be baked apple. In addition to coffee and tea, my fiancé will be making his homemade hot chocolate mix and I will be making pumpkin spice sauce (as in a pumpkin spice latte!) for our guests to add to their drinks if they wish. I wanted to mention to anyone looking for cheap ideas that the hot chocolate for 120 people is only going to run us about $15, so even if you wanted to give double the portion per person, that could be a really inexpensive favor – if you make it yourself! Prepackaged = not as cheap. Other inexpensive favor ideas we had were a bundle of cinnamon sticks, a bundle of honey sticks, a small sachet or jar filled with baking spices for an apple pie or with an herb blend for roasting meat (we are food people too, in case you can’t tell.. sorry if these ideas are too specific!) or even just some rosemary/sage/thyme tied together, mini pumpkins in a makeshift patch for guests to “pick” their own, pumpkin latte mix (might be more challenging to find all dry ingredients for this), apple cider doughnuts (THE best – we’re still tryin to find a way to incorporate this somewhere else). We had also originally planned to have apple cider as well, but once we found out we had to go apple ice cream as opposed to pumpkin, we wanted to try to even things out a bit on the dessert table. What a long post, I don’t do this often! I hope some of these suggestions are helpful to those of you looking for ideas! I’ll post more if I remember them.. Love me some fall!!

    • Wow, thanks for all the great ideas. The pumpkin patch idea could really work at our “wedding cabin,” and your save-the-dates sound fab! I’m an autumn baby so anything fall gets my attention. Food trucks are hugely popular here, too, and our “rehearsal dinner” sans rehearsal will be at a local pub with a couple food trucks servin’ up some tasty foodz.

    • As excited as I am about the fall vibe, there’s a part of me that worries about going “too rustic” with our wedding, kind of like Marie Antoinette with her phony penchant for the farm life (didn’t she have a pretend village in which she gussied herself up as a goat shepherdess? whatevs) but I really *did* grow up a mountain kid and just want so badly to share that with our families and friends. If we could’ve dragged everybody to the Smoky Mountains for it, we would’ve. Thanks again for your awesome foodie-lover favor ideas — the herb bunches sound perfect for us!

11. Absolutely love fall! Our wedding is scheduled for October 19th of NEXT YEAR! I look around at all of the amazing ideas and I feel slightly shell shocked at the craftiness and just plain greatness there is to choose from. We are going to do a fall carnival type wedding and honestly even though we have a year to get everything together I’m still feeling panicky about the details. Thank goodness for this site and it’s wonderful stories on how the BIG DAY always seems to end in bliss. And the constant inspirations.

12. November 25! we wanted a summer wedding at first, but my fiance works for a senate campaign so we have to do it post election. The only really fallish things we’re doing are having dried flowers and the fact that my dress has long sleeves. These are all really sweet ideas, though. But does anyone else agree with me that wedding favors are a bit puzzling? Our wedding is destination, so we’re putting ppl up for the night in a fabulous resort and feeding them dinner and brunch. I think favors are a little too bday party. Just my opinion 😉

    • Favors are definitely NOT required! Only do this if you want to!

13. We’re getting married Sept 29th in Maine and going the pick-your-own apple route for our welcome dinner centerpieces- in borrowed wooden bowls with other fall fruits. A family friend with a farm is bringing trees, grasses and any flowers still around for the decor on the wedding day. For the kids, we’re serving sparkling apple juice at the ceremony (sparkling water and wine for the adults). We’re sticking to a Greek family tradition of giving out Jordan Almonds at the wedding. We mostly picked fall to get married so we could hopefully surf during our wedding weekend with friends- our wedding is down the street from one of the surfing beaches in Maine and fall is the best time of year for it.

14. November 4th here. My sister is helping me make caramel apples that I am using as place cards/favors and I will be making mini loaves of pumpkin bread for my out of town guests. My cake will be decorated with autumn leaves and my flower girl is going to scatter silk autumn leaves instead of flower petals.

    Overall the wedding is going to be very small and low key, I don’t have specific colors, just the general autumn color scheme.

15. October 20th, here–we’re letting the restaurant take complete control over the decorating. They usually decorate for fall anyway, and the owners have a bunch of leftover decorations from their own fall wedding that they’re lending us. The only piece we’re adding is a few branches with some leaves to designate the “altar” for the ceremony, and we’re done! Also, definitely going the seasonal pie route in lieu of a cake–far yummier.

16. November wedding in da hizzouse.

    We’re going for Non-Obvious Autumnal. 🙂 We’re in a tent with crossbeams, so we’ll be hanging bare branches with candles and flowers in test tubes over long tables. Speaking of flowers, we’re going to be skewing towards textural natural elements, like bittersweet, dried teasels, etc. – cool stuff that’ll be available everywhere – along with actual flowers, which we have yet to choose. Favors will include tiny compasses on escort cards and if the DIY thing goes well, then it’ll also include map bookmarks as place cards.

    We’re not trying to get all up in everyone’s face with the Fall! Harvest! Leaves! Pumpkins! Acorns! accoutrements. Instead we’re going for a more subtle expression of a sort of witchy, harvest-y, end-of-season vibe. Also, because we’re going to be in a tent which is already an indoor-outdoor space, we’re going to try to further blur that line between inside and outside.

    Also, for those who want to save even more money on the autumnal leafy look, don’t forget about that perennial fall children’s project standby, preserving leaves with wax paper! Put down a sheet of newspaper on your ironing board, put a sheet of wax paper, place your carefully chosen leaves on top, cover with another sheet of wax paper, more newsprint, and iron. The goal is to coat the leaf in wax to preserve the colors. You may not be able to print with a printer directly on that, but you can certainly write on it, carefully, with a permanent marker (sharpies come in silver, for example) or you could probably glue/modpodge on a label. I’m fairly certain that would be cheaper.

17. we are having our wedding IN the fall but its not autumn THEMED. as a nod to our hosting season, we’re doing the following: centerpieces are white birch trunks, split in half and made to hold pillar candles. we also will have succulents on the tables.

    for the guest book, its not a book at all.. instead a friend carved out a tree trunk and burned our initials and the wedding date into it. each leaf is about 1″ and guests can sign them (they are wood). after the wedding i will mount the trunk with all the leaves and it will be a piece of art we can take with us wherever we go. i painted the leaves in greens, yellows, organs and reds. its friggin gorgeous!

18. we’re getting married early september… i would have liked the first day of autumn in late september.. but things didn’t work out that way.
    So i’m bringing in a touch of autumn anyway, because I love it 🙂 I’m working in subtle fall colors, not the typical oranges and reds, etc.. but the earthy brown/oranges, light greens and country yellows. (bridesmaids dress colors). More harvest-y as someone else had mentioned. We’re having a bonfire during the reception , and I was going to make our own tea bags for favors but I think I will just make up s’more packages that people can choose to use at our fire, or take home. I am incorporating chinese lantern plants into the bouquets, and using burlap and driftwood on our tables, scattering pinecones around, and I have a knitted shawl/cardigan as well! We’re in Nova Scotia so it will probably cool off quite a bit in the evening which I’m hoping for 🙂

    I like the apple idea, might have a few for decoration. cheap and easy!

19. October 26 Halloween-themed wedding here. 🙂 I’m excited to see the caramel popcorn idea posted on here! If all works out right, we’ll be purchasing bulk caramel popcorn balls as favors for our guests. Popcorn balls are what my mom and her sisters remember getting in their treat bags on Halloween. I wanted to tie in a little retro, and these fit the bill perfectly. Also, Oriental Trading Co. has orange cellophane bags in which the balls will be placed. Tie a little black satin ribbon around it, and ta-da! Favors! The only down-side is that popcorn balls aren’t necessarily cheap, and we’ll have upwards to about 150 guests. I considered making them myself, but I’d rather not have band-aids on my fingertips for the wedding…

20. October bride here! We are having an autumn music themed wedding. Our invitations featured flowers and autumn leaves, and all of our decor will center around autumn colors. For favors, we are actually doing two types: edible and non-edible. The edible favors are cones made of old sheet music, covered with butterflies (also made of sheet music), and filled with different types of candy. Our non-edible favors are from a friend of mine who does custom wood burnings. She already did an Alice in Wonderland for us as well as an epic Cthulhu burning. For our wedding, she is hand burning over 50 squares of wood with autumn decorations, our names, and the date. This will definitely bring out the rustic chic feel I am going for. Oh, and did I mention our photo booth? Made completely out of desiduous autumn trees… it’s so good. I just couldn’t make this up. Besides, it totally easy to do! Maybe I will post a DIY on our epic photo booth when it’s finished! 😀

21. October 27th! We’re not doing favors, but rather detailed gift bags. 95% of our guests are from out of town for a Boston wedding – so we’re doing a mix of Boston things and a mix of me/groom things to welcome them to the hotels. We are going apple picking and putting local apples in the bags… and we were thinking about apple cider (but I’m worried about the refrigeration issue) – so I love the bagged cider idea! We’re also considering making jars with the dry ingredients for Boston Baked Beans, but I’m on the hunt for CHEAPER Ball canning jars (I went to Ball State – which was started by the Ball family:))

    As for decorations, I understand those that are not into the pumpkins, etc… but Halloween is one of my favorite holidays/October IS my favorite month so we are LOVING pumpkins for our reception. We’re getting the mini ones, carving out the top and popping votives in them and then floating them in vases. (yep, pumpkins float… or so is what we’ve read… we’ll be testing this theory out as soon as pumpkins start to show up in stores). If they don’t float like that, we’ll let them sink in the vases and then just float candles;) Brown, rust and olive green are the colors.

    I designed our wedding invites – taking one a picture of one of those leaves they make in lattes and photoshopping it – so it was in fall colors stamped on the invite. That leaf is on all of our stuff.

    I bought necklaces from local jewelry makers for my bridesmaids – leaves. A different type for each:)

    We told our venue them not carrying Shipyard’s Pumpkin Ale would be a deal breaker;)

    We’re doing a Halloween pub crawl for an after party since the reception is in the afternoon:) The fiance and I already have our costumes picked out:)

    • Not sure how many Ball jars you are looking for but I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30+ mason jars- I too am getting married in October and I have been collecting them for crafts but decided to only use about 12 of the large ones. I also live in Massachusetts but on the west side.I would be willing to sell them to you cheap so that I dont have to think of uses for them after the wedding lol- let me know what you think.

22. Autumn is my favorite time of the year. I just find it the most romantic. It’s pretty much the only time of the year you will see my lazy ass go for walks outside. The trees are so beautiful. We like walking hand and hand when the sun’s just going down…<3
    The ribbon is probably my favorite of the bunch. I…I kind of need it, for…stuff.

23. My wedding is 9-13-13 ( that’s a Friday the 13th)… My colors are green, orange and gray. I have a lot of DIY projects to do. Everything from button bouquets, cake topper, pumpkin and vanilla desserts, table numbers ( which will be my favorite horror movies) to centerpieces which will be pumpkins, flowers and candles.

24. September 29, love some of the ideas here, especially the non-orange ones. We’re having more of a harvest-type wedding, decorating in wheat and ivy and wildflowers, gold bridesmaids dresses, pie instead of cake, and our favors are little 3 oz bags of ground coffee with a maple sugar candy. The only pumpkin thing we will have is a Fresh Pumpkin Pie (along with caramel apple pie, roasted pecan pie, and triple berry). I might jazz up my centerpieces with dried herbs, that was a cute idea. And i love the pinecone candles so much I might just buy them for me!

25. Our wedding is creeping up: October 20th! A few friends of mine helped me make little love knots from woven wheat. We also plan to buy potted mums and place them inside hollowed out pumpkins.

26. saw some fabulous ideas for an autumn wedding. Loved the burlap table runner idea ….. but it is not linked to where you can purchase them…… am I missing something? Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks L

    • This post is a couple years old… looks like that specific product is no longer available, but you can get something similar here: http://www.orientaltrading.com/personalized-burlap-table-runner-a2-3_3584.fltr

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