DIY Wedding: Welcome Bags

Welcome Bags are a great way to let your out-of-town guests know you're thankful they made the trip. For our San Francisco wedding, we loaded up custom tote bags with city info and snacks with a bit of personal flare. All custom graphic design created by Ryan Leggett.

Tote Bags: 

These welcome bags began with totes purchased from Jakprints. They have lots of custom options and can print multiple colors if your design calls for it. We ordered their most economic option (Augusta #825) in natural fabric and found them to be great quality for the price. The material was a good weight sewn together with sturdy stitching. 

Itinerary:

A thoughtful itinerary gave our guests the weekend scoop. We included times and addresses of activities where they could hang with the bride and groom, our instagram hashtag and transit reminders. Consider waiting to print until just before your wedding to include an accurate weather forecast. 

Water Bottles: 

Personalized Water Bottles are a snap with inkjet labels and a printer. The key is to use Vinyl Labels such as these to avoid ink bleeds if the bottles become wet. Then simply remove the existing label from a generic water bottle, stick on your new label, and voila! 

Since water bottles vary in diameter you'll want to ensure that you're not covering your letters or graphics where the two ends of the label overlap. I recommend printing a sample first before committing to your whole batch. 

City Maps:

While many rely on their smart phones to navigate around town, nothing's quite like a physical map in your pocket. We included these SF City Maps in each bag to help our guests find their way. Many larger cities will have a tourism department or travel agency that make acquiring these maps a breeze. In San Francisco, I contacted the Bay City Guide and received free maps in the mail by sending a large envelope with the correct return postage. 

As an added bonus these city maps also included the local bus routes for public transportation as well as coupons for excursions and activities on the back. 

Personalized Snacks:

     Consider adding a sweet or savory treat to your welcome bags as a reward for their travels. We included two snacks in each that represented our hometowns. For my husband we gave Whitley's Honey Roasted Virginia Peanuts. In honor of my family, we included a transitional candy that's made during family gatherings each holiday. We packaged each in cellophane bags with twist ties (found at the dollar store) and labeled them with more custom inkjet labels. You can purchase snacks that are pre-packaged such as granola bars or trail mix to save yourself the packaging step. 

Recovery Kits:

Let your guests know it's alright to cut loose. A recovery kit including individual packets of advil, a sleep mask, and earplugs from MaskCraft will leave your guests grateful that you thought of everything.