I decided that I wanted our favours to be functional as well as follow the theme of the wedding. A good while ago I came across the video tutorial on how to make fabric peonies on the Creature Comforts blog (which, if you haven't heard of you should totally check out because it's a really great blog full of lovely images and inspiration!). Peonies are my absolutely favourite flowers and I was planning on having Coral Charm peonies in my bouquet, so I thought it would be a lovely idea to give all the ladies peony brooches for their favours. As well as being really cute and useful (I bought brooch pins that also had a clip - so the flowers can be worn on your clothes, on a bag or in your hair!), they also added a fun pop of colour to the tables:
Although I would happily have filled all the tables with pink peonies, I had a feeling that the men might not be so enthusiastic to receive them! So that meant thinking of a different favour for the male guests. Since our overall theme was 'tying the knot' I thought it appropriate to give the men knots, and keeping it functional decided to turn them into key rings. Again I found an online video tutorial explaining how to tie a monkey fist knot and started practising. They are a bit hard to get the hang of, and do require a bit of patience, but are totally worth the effort. My husband was really nagging me for a wedding related job to do so I tasked him to make the 60-odd key rings. Once he got the hang of the knotting (it took him quite some time, especially since he thought he could make a 'tool' to help him…why do guys do that?! lol) he chipped away at that number and managed to finish all his knots before I was even halfway through my peonies (I love the photo of him working away surrounded by knots at the top of the page!).
Although this ended up being quite a task to take on (we had 110 guests!) I'm so glad that we made our favours - they added another personal element to the day and were a great source of conversation too. I loved looking through the photos when we came back and spotting the brooches on some of the ladies and I love the fact that everyone now has a cute and function gift that will remind them of the day.
