Saturday, November 29, 2008

Welcome Bags

You know what I'm talking about... The cute little bags that you couldn't wait to prepare for your guests to welcome them to your wedding weekend. You carefully scoured the Internet for hours looking for the right bags, labels and ribbon. You made lists of the fun contents to buy in bulk and you contacted the Chamber of Commerce in your wedding location for bundles of tourist brochures. And then all of that carefully collected stuff sat in a box and waited..

Until it was the weekend before the wedding and then you are all like "oh.my.goodness! we have to put together more than 70 bags and individually wrap all of this bulk food so we can use the super-cute monogram labels that I ordered. and I hope I bought enough yellow ribbon to tie around the bags with the chocolate chip cookies. and wasn't I going to write a nice welcome letter to all the guests? oh no!!"

At least that's how the welcome bag project went down in the Bliss household. We pulled it together though and after a few late nights of serious teamwork, here are the results.



Brown kraft bags were bought in packs of 12 at Michaels. Labels are from MyWeddingLabels and double-faced satin ribbon was bought in bulk from Papermart.

For yummy goodies, we bought Goldfish, pretzels and peanuts all in bulk at Costco. We also bought chocolate chip cookies there (these were assembled the day before the wedding to make sure they were fresh and not melted). I had ordered a ton of food-safe cello bags like these and smaller, monogrammed labels from MyWeddingLabels.



I TOTALLY underestimated how long it would take us to get all those goodies individually packaged into the cello bags. This is where Mr. Bliss, my helpful engineer, came to the rescue.


The magic welcome bag funnel, made out of a cleaned milk jug.


Mr. Bliss in action.


The assembly line.


A few hours later!


The finished product!

The welcome bags included: peanuts, goldfish, pretzels, chocolate chip cookies (not pictured), little packets of Tylenol, a local tourist map and area brochures and a welcome letter to our guests. I was able to refashion the wonderful map that Laura Hooper made for our save-the-date as the cover of the welcome letter.

5 comments:

jessica lynn said...

what a great little gift bag! isn't it helpful to have an engineer around the house?!

Stephanie said...

I just found your blog while doing a google search for welcome bags & welcome letters. I was hoping to find a sample welcome letter to give me some ideas. I'm drawing a blank and I don't know where to start with them. If you still have a copy of your welcome letter, would you mind emailing me a copy (edited to leave out personal info if necessary)? I would be so grateful!

stephanie_rice@comcast.net

Annie said...

These are SO super cute!!! I am in the process of brainstorming about welcome bags and I think I may steal some of your ideas! I had planned to use brown paper bags also, but I love the idea of personalized labels and stickers. I'm also going to include a welcome letter - so if you have a sample, would you mind sharing? Thanks so much in advance :-)

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Kate Deem said...

I agree with Stephanie Rice - I would love to see your welcome note! The bags are absolutely beautiful. I'm getting married on 12/11/10 & this is one thing we are trying to get off our to-do list now! Thanks.

Kate.Deem@gmail.com