The favors were the last thing I dealt with, and that is how I ended up tying tags at 10pm on a Tuesday with a glass of wine going warm next to me. Little jars of local honey. My cousin Dana came over to help and we got maybe twelve done before we started reading the tags out loud in dumb voices. Slow going. Worth it anyway.
Here is the thing about favor tags. They are tiny, so people assume they are nothing, but they are the one piece guests actually hold and read up close while they wait for the bar. I had guests text me about the saying on mine three days later. Nobody mentioned the centerpieces I agonized over. The tag is small and it punches above its size, which still annoys me a little.
So below are the tag sets and templates I either used or have since printed for friends. I ran a test page of each on plain paper first, held it at arm’s length, and squinted across the room. If it read from there, it made the list. A couple of these are affiliate links, so if you grab one a few cents come my way. Does not cost you anything.
Some links below are affiliate links. If you download one for your day, I earn a tiny bit and it changes nothing on your end.
When your reception is basically in the trees
We got married at a lodge outside Asheville with pine everywhere, so when my neighbor Priya was planning her woodsy thing I sent her these little fox and deer tags. She paired them with maple candy and the kids at her wedding lost their minds over the animals. Cute and they actually fit a tag the size of a credit card, which a lot of detailed art does not.
I printed a test sheet at the FedEx on Patton because my home printer turns brown into mud. Came out crisp. The animals stayed readable even shrunk down.
One gripe. The line art is fine but a few of the critters sit close to the punch-hole spot, so check your hole placement before you make a stack. I clipped an owl’s ear on the first one. Just one. Lesson learned.
For the person who hates anything fussy
My maid of honor is the kind of person who thinks one font is one font too many. She wanted favors that looked like she barely tried, which is its own kind of work. These plain tags did it. Lots of white space, a thin little line, room to write a name by hand if you want.
She put them on welcome baskets at the hotel, granola and a bottle of water and a hangover packet. The simple tag let the basket do the talking. I wrote each guest’s name on mine in gold pen at the table the night before and my hand was a claw by the end.
The catch is they are so bare that bad cardstock shows. I tried them on cheap matte first and it looked like a receipt. Bumped up to a heavier stock and they finally felt like something. Spend the extra two dollars.
Shower favors that smell like October
I threw my sister’s shower the second weekend of November and the whole thing went rust and burnt orange because that is just what she wanted. These autumn tags matched without me trying. I tied them to little jars of apple butter from the farm stand on Route 9.
They print warm. The orange came out a touch darker on my screen than on paper, which honestly worked in my favor since I was scared it would look like a traffic cone.
The one thing I would flag is the size. They run a little big for a tiny jar lid, so I trimmed about a quarter inch off mine to keep them from flopping over. Five minutes with scissors. Not a dealbreaker.
The soft purple ones I almost kept for myself
A coworker asked me to help with her spring shower and she is all lavender, everything lavender, so I pulled these. We tied them to little muslin sachets of dried lavender from a stall at the Saturday market. The whole table smelled incredible and the tags did not fight it.
The purple is gentle, not loud, which I was worried about because soft colors can vanish on white cardstock. These held up. You can still read the words from across a table.
My only nitpick. The script on these is pretty, but it is thin, so if your venue is dim like ours was, thicken the text a hair before you print a batch. I figured that out one wasted page in. Cheap mistake to make.
The eucalyptus thank-you everyone seems to want
If I had a dollar for every friend who asked me for a greenery thank-you tag I could have paid for my flowers. These are that. Little sprigs of eucalyptus around a thank you, and they go with nearly any treat you stick them on. I used them on seed packets at my own reception.
They are forgiving. I printed mine at the copy shop on Haywood on regular text-weight paper to test and even that looked decent, which almost never happens.
The green can shift toward blue depending on your printer, so do one test page before you commit. Mine leaned a little teal the first run. Swapped the paper, fixed itself. Glad I checked instead of printing forty.
A whole set, because you always need more than you think
I ran out of tags at my own wedding. Counted heads, printed exactly that many, forgot about the day-of additions and the people who took two. This is the set I wish I had grabbed instead, because it comes with a bunch of variations so you are not stuck reprinting one design at 11pm.
My aunt used these for her Friendsgiving favors, little bags of spiced pecans, and the mix of sayings meant no two tags on the table were quite the same. People noticed. They picked through to find their favorite.
The downside of a set is decision paralysis. I spent twenty minutes choosing between three that looked nearly identical to anyone but me. Pick fast and move on, is my advice, which I did not follow.
The one I hand people who swear they can’t design
This is the template I send the friends who panic at the word editable. You type your names in, the spacing sorts itself out, and it does not blow up the second you change a date. I tested it at home on plain paper, taped it to the fridge, and left it there two days before I trusted it on the good cardstock.
What got me was the margins. So many templates run text right to the edge and a home printer clips it, so you get a name sliced in half on the one card people actually read. This one leaves a little breathing room. I still printed mine at the shop on Haywood because my printer streaks anything dark.
One thing. The default font is on the thin side, so for a dim fall venue bump the weight before you print a stack. Took me a single wasted sheet to notice. Cheap lesson, again.
The Questions I Get Most
What do you write on a favor tag?
Honestly, less than you think. A friend asked me this in a panic the week before her wedding and I told her to skip the paragraph. A thank you and your two names and the date is plenty, or a tiny inside joke if the favor is funny.
Mine just said thanks for bee-ing here because I gave out honey and I have no shame. People still quote it back to me. Whatever you write, read it out loud first. If it makes you cringe out loud, it will cringe on the table too.
What treats pair with tags?
Anything small that survives sitting out for a few hours. I did local honey. My cousin did maple candy, my coworker did dried lavender sachets, my sister did apple butter from a farm stand.
The rule I learned the messy way is avoid chocolate at a summer reception. I watched a friend’s truffle favors go soft and sad on the welcome table by 4pm. Seed packets, candied nuts, little jam jars, hard candy, tea bags. Those just sit there and behave.
How do I make tags fast?
Get a craft punch and a guillotine cutter, not scissors. I cut my first batch with scissors and my thumb hurt for two days. A corner-rounder punch made mine look bought instead of homemade and it took seconds per tag.
Then set up an assembly line. Print, cut, punch, thread, knot, in stations, and rope in one helper. Dana and I knocked out 90 in an evening once we stopped doing each tag start to finish and split it up. Pre-cut your twine too. Tiny thing, saves a ton of time.
One Last Thing
Favor tags are the smallest thing on your whole list and somehow the part guests remember out loud, which is either charming or unfair depending on how late you are running. Pick a template that fits your treats, test one page on plain paper, and squint at it from across the room before you print a hundred.
And buy more cardstock than your headcount says. Past me printed exactly enough and spent the night before my wedding watching the printer instead of sleeping. Learn from that. Buy the extra pack.