spoken for

Your wedding is all about you. It’s a day you’ll never forget, and one that you want all your guests to remember too. In all the stress of planning the wedding, you might opt for some generic wedding favors, but you shouldn’t do that! While whatever you give your guests as a wedding favor will of course help them remember your big day, giving your guests a creative gift will ensure that their memories of your wedding are just as vivid as yours. Check out these ideas for creative wedding favors that you can give your guests without putting too much of a strain on your wallet.

Different Kinds of Mugs

Rather than simply giving each guest a generic gift, opt for some variety and let people choose their wedding favor. One way to do this is by making a variety of different kinds of mugs and leaving them on a table for guests to pick up on their way out. Create coffee mugs with the wedding information on them, so coffee drinkers will remember the big day. Create beer steins too, so your guests can instead choose a beer mug if they want to remember the wedding while having a pint. The great thing about mugs is that if you buy them in bulk from www.minespress.com they are fairly cheap, meaning you won’t be spending a ton of money on party favors. Another idea for your wedding is rather then giving out the mugs on your guests’ way out, give them out before the dinner. That way, they’ll be drinking out of them during the dinner, and the mugs will become extra sentimental!

Personalized Flash Drive

Handing out a personalized flash drive might seem like an odd wedding favor, but in today’s digital age they are actually a terrific gift to give. Load up the flash drive with pictures and videos from the wedding, and include a playlist of the songs that you played during the celebration. There may not be a better way to remember the wedding then giving an audio and visual reminder, and your guests will enjoy all the fun and embarrassing pictures. Many people require flash drives for work these days anyways, meaning they’ll be a useful gift that your guests will use often.

Tiny Plants

Giving out little plants as wedding favors can kill two birds with one stone, and save you money on your wedding. Arrange the tables with beautiful, tiny plants for decorations (such as mini cacti) and decorate the pots with the wedding details. Once the party is winding down, inform the guests that they can take these plants home. It’s a very fun way for your guests to remember the wedding, since they’ll think of you every time they take a look at the plant or give it some water. Little plants are very inexpensive, and designing some stickers to put on them is also affordable. These plants are guaranteed to be a hit with your guests.

Image credit: http://site.agiftpersonalized.com/

Oh, yeah, envy me.  Envy me hard.

Really I guess it’s not all that bad.  I haven’t had to really deal with any of the set-up of our new insurance that’s coming with Steve’s job.  And they were so nice as to get our start date for the day he started the job which is great because he’s really paranoid regarding K since our other insurance ran out Dec 31.  The confusing thing is what to do with dental.  It’s optional, pay-in, for the three of the rest of us and his mom was telling him about their plan which is cheap compared to ours.  So he goes to work and tells them and they might switch even.  So might not be up to us to do anything.

But here I sit, in the online account of the health, trying to find out if our doctors are in network now or not.  I can’t find our family practitioner  which is strange, because the nurse practitioner who is there and the other doctor they now have, they are on there.  But I want him…

At least I don’t have to check quite as many doctors as I would have 3 years ago.  Thankfully, K is down to just a family practitioner near us with us, her pediatrician (quite a bit away), and her kidney guy.  And even then, hopefully we won’t have to be doing any kind of checking in with him after this year.

I still gotta check on the boys’ allergist.

Envy me!

So last weekend was pretty darn cool.

Steve had already wanted to take a weekend for just us, before he started his job this Monday.  Not already aware of this, one of his brothers and his wife gave us this awesome gift for Christmas: gift cards to Red Lobster, movie ticket gift cards, babysitting coupons, and a gift certificate for a stay in a Hilton!

So we got to use that this past weekend.  We went on Friday, in part, because my mom is off on Fridays and was able to watch the kids to start.  She stayed with them from early afternoon and overnight and then our sister-in-law came and watched them the next morning until we got home.

We ended up not doing the movie.  Steve’s not really one for going to the movies, so choosing one was like pulling teeth then we were up in the area too late for the showing we were going to go to anyway.  He told me to take E to see The Hobbit soon instead.  E’s been begging.  Anyway, we checked in and hung around there for a bit then went to dinner a bit early.  Good decision.  By the time we got our food that place was hopping and people were starting to have very long waits.  But we sat a while and went all out, we ended up going double up on our gift cards by the time we paid a tip, haha.  But it was so stinking good.

After that, we just sort of wandered around.  We went in a lot of stores which is not something I really enjoy doing but it was tolerable without children.  No worrying about anyone possibly getting hit in the parking lot because they can’t hold my hand or listen, no complaining in the stores, no sudden trips to the bathroom, you get it.  Love those kids more than my life but a break was nice!  We even went out for ice cream!  I can’t remember the name of the place for the life of me but I’ve seen it several times, it’s a famous chain, I guess, but we’d never gone.  That’s also my last ice cream for a long time.  Back on my diet now!

It was back to the hotel after that then the next morning we had breakfast there and it was amazing.  Love getting an omelette made just for me the way I love it.  We did some more wandering around as we headed back.  We stopped at Goodwill even, and ended up scoring E a pretty large Lego set: the Millenium Falcon!  It was $100 cheaper than retail and isn’t really missing too many pieces.  He’s upset it has no little dudes in it, but I can easily remedy that and the other missing pieces by hitting bricklink.com.

We had a great time.  Though we weren’t out doing spectacular things it was just great to get away for a little bit.  Felt really refreshing.  And, yes, now Steve’s in full force at his new job.  :)