We did little jars of local honey. Forty of them, lined up on my counter for a week, and I kept knocking one over with my elbow every time I made coffee. The honey was the easy part. The tags were what took me three tries, because the first batch said our wedding date in a font so curly nobody could read the year.
Here is what I figured out after watching guests leave. Half the favors stayed on the tables. The ones that left were either edible or had a tag that made them feel like a gift instead of a party favor. That tag does more work than the thing it is tied to, which still annoys me a little, because the honey cost more.
So below are the tag and label printables I have actually run through a printer, plus the few I bought for friends after mine. I print one on copy paper, tie it to a jar, and set it on the windowsill to see if it reads in daylight. A couple of these are affiliate links. Grab one and a little something comes back to me. You pay the same.
Quick note, a couple of these are affiliate links. If one ends up at your reception, it helps keep this little blog running and you pay the same.
The tag I reach for when I am out of ideas
I keep coming back to this one because it does not fight me. You drop your names in, the line spacing holds, and it does not turn into a mess when the text is longer than the example. I tied a test print to a tiny bottle of olive oil for my cousin’s shower and it sat on her mantel for a month afterward, which is the only review that matters.
The thing I almost missed. The default size prints a hair small for a wide jar lid, so the tag floats. I bumped it up about ten percent and it sat right. One scrap-paper page and I knew.
When you want the favor to say thank you out loud
This is the one I hand to friends who want the tag to carry the whole message so they can skip the place cards. It says thanks, it has room for two names and a date, and it reads from across a table, which I checked by taping one to my hallway wall and walking to the kitchen.
I printed mine on a cream cardstock from the craft store on Pell, maybe 110 pound, and the cream warmed it up so it did not look like a coupon. Watch the bottom margin though. My home printer ate the last few millimeters and clipped the date on the first run, so I nudged everything up before I did the real stack.
The fancy-looking one that needs the right printer
My maid of honor used these for a fall shower and tied them to little bags of spiced nuts. The gold leaf detail made a two-dollar bag of nuts look planned. I was a little jealous, honestly, because mine were plain.
Here is the catch, and it is the same catch with anything gold. Your home printer prints gold as a sad mustard. She ran these at a copy shop on her lunch break and they came out metallic-ish and fine. If you only have an inkjet at home, test one page first or you will waste a sheet learning what I already know.
The candy bag joke that earns its keep
These crack me up. You stick a fake nutrition label on a little bag of candy, except the calories are listed as love or whatever you want to type in, and people read the whole thing standing at the table. My sister-in-law did sour gummies in clear bags for her bachelorette and three people asked her where she got them.
Fill in your own lines instead of leaving the sample text. The default copy is cute but everyone has seen it, so swap in an inside joke. One small gripe. The label runs a touch wide for a snack-size bag, so I trimmed about a quarter inch off each side with scissors and it sat flat after that.
For the shower, not the wedding, and that matters
I printed a sheet of these for a friend’s brunch shower when she ran out of steam two days before. They are softer and a little more playful than the wedding tags, which fit a Sunday morning with mimosas better than something formal would.
We tied them to jars of jam from the farmers market and they were gone before the food was. The only thing I would flag is that the lettering is on the delicate side, so if your shower is somewhere dim, print a test and squint at it from the doorway. I bumped the weight up one notch so it held up under string lights.
The soft lavender set that goes with everything
A coworker did a tiny backyard wedding and used these on little muslin sachets of dried lavender. The pale purple matched nothing and somehow matched everything, and the sachets actually smelled good sitting in a bowl by the door.
I like that the color is muted enough to print clean on a basic printer. No mustard-gold problem here. One note. The lavender is light, so on bright white paper it can wash out under harsh light. She moved to a slightly warmer ivory stock and it held. Took her one test page on the kitchen table to spot it.
The tag for the favor everyone keeps
Scrunchie favors are the ones that leave. Nobody leaves a scrunchie on a table, I have never once seen it happen, so if you want the favor to actually walk out the door this is a safe bet. The tag loops through and sits flat against the fabric.
My friend did velvet ones in two colors for her fall wedding and the tags made the dollar-store haul look intentional. The hole placement is the thing to check. The default punch spot sat a little high for a thick scrunchie, so I moved it down before printing forty, and then the string did not pull the tag crooked.
Things Brides Email Me About
What favors do guests actually keep?
Short answer, edible or wearable. I watched people leave half our honey jars on the tables, but the little bags of candy and the scrunchies my friend did at her wedding were gone before the cake.
If it is something they have to find room for in a drawer, it stays behind. Food gets eaten in the car. A scrunchie goes on a wrist. That is the whole pattern, and a nice tag just makes the cheap version of either one feel like you meant it.
How much per favor is normal?
Honestly? People spend all over the place, but I would not lose sleep going low. Mine landed around three dollars a head with the honey, and looking back the tag did more for the look than the extra dollar of honey did.
A friend did a buck-fifty per person with candy bags and printed tags and nobody could tell. If you are tight, put your money in the printable and buy the cheaper filler. Nobody is weighing the jar.
Edible or keepsake?
I learned this the hard way with forty jars I kept tripping over for a week. Edible wins for most weddings, because it does not ask the guest to keep anything. They eat it and the favor is done its job.
Keepsakes only work if they are tiny and useful, like a scrunchie or a magnet. A trinket they feel rude tossing but never use is the worst of both. When my coworker stuck to lavender sachets people actually used, that was the one keepsake I saw stick around.
Before You Commit to a Template
If I were doing it again I would spend less time on the favor and more on the tag, which is a weird thing to admit after buying forty jars of honey. The filler can be a two-dollar bag of candy. The tag is what makes a guest pick it up.
Print one on copy paper, tie it to whatever you are giving, and set it on a windowsill in daylight before you commit. If it reads from across the room and the date is not in some font you cannot decipher, you are done. Go knock something else off the list.