Destination Wedding Welcome Bags - DIY
Hello Everyone!! I had my destination wedding in Jamaica in July 2012 and wanted to share all of the fun things that I crafted for the wedding and for the guests that attended. I worked really hard tying in all of the little beach themed ideas for my wedding to get the impact I wanted. I have several posts that I'll still be adding as well as converting from the old blog. I promised myself that I will get all wedding crafts blogged this year! So today I wanted to share the Welcome Bags that I made for my guests. We were very blessed to have over 20 people paying their own way to attend our destination wedding! I wanted to be able to give them a token of my appreciation as well as something they could keep forever and remember our trip.
Items I needed for the bags:
- Bags (ingreetings.com)
- Iron-on fabric pages (Michaels)
- Printer
- 4"x 6" Tag shaped paper and blue ribbon (Michaels)
- Brag Books for Destination Wedding Guides (Michaels)
- Personalized Insulated Tumblers with straws (discountmugs.com)
- Pashminas (Ebay)
- 4"x 6" card stock (Michaels)
- Disposable cameras (theknot.com)
- Travel-size First-aid kits (Target)
- Luggage Tags (Target)
- Oh $h!t K!t
- Chapstick
- Motrin packets (Staples)
- Travel-sized Hand sanitizer (Bath & Body Works)
- Trial-sized Sunscreen (Target)
- Glass Jars for sand (Michaels)
- Blue and white tissue paper for stuffing (Target)
For the actual welcome bag, I ordered 20 bags from ingreetings.com and because I was buying in bulk I was able to use the wholesale website and wholesale price for $4.95 each. I wanted a decent sized bag because I wanted my guests to be able to use them at the beach and put in their towels, snorkel gear etc, these were 19"x 14"x 5". These were the iron-on fabric sheets I found at Michael's that I could just stick in my printer! They were much cheaper than Staples, and I had a coupon!
I knew I wanted the iron-on to be the size of the pocket in the middle of my tote, that way it wouldn't over power the tote and it would be just simple enough that my guests would love it. I found the clip art online and then added 'Jamaica 2012' on top of it in powerpoint.
I didn't want to make the iron-on too cheesy by adding our names "Travis & Elisabeth's Wedding' so I left it simple. The guests are still using the bags now!
I used my fabric scissors to cut out each iron-on. I was able to fit two iron-ons on one sheet, which made it cheaper because I only needed one iron-on package in the end.
Here are my bags with the iron-on attached! I placed the iron-on where I wanted and put a towel in-between the iron and the bag and then simply ironed it directly onto the bag.
I found the card stock tags in Michaels and instantly bought them because it took out the step of cutting card stock into tags. I just got onto power point and made the slide size 4"x 6" and inserted the starfish image I had found online. The image was black and I opened up Paint and turned it to blue. Then I centered everyone's name on the tag over the starfish and printed one by one putting the 4" side of the tag into the printer.
The most fun I had with these bags was figuring out what I was going to put inside of them! Here is a photo of what everything looked like before I assembled the bags.
Here are the bags ready to go to all of my guests in Jamaica! I didn't assemble them until we got there so that everything would be easier to travel with and nothing could get ruined. I decided to give one bag per couple because I knew Travis and I would only carry one if it was us.
Here is a picture of me holding the bag, not a bad size right?
What other things would you have put into the Welcome Bags?
