Decorated cookies are cute and meaningful wedding favors for a fun reception surprise. This delicious token of thanks to wedding guests offers many choices of yummy favors and adorable decorating themes.
Cookie Wedding Favors
Choosing cookies for a wedding reception favor is a no-brainer for couples who want to give guests a favor they will truly enjoy. While shot glasses, candles and bookmarker favors are popular favors at weddings, couples do not know whether their guests actually kept or used them after the reception is over. Giving cookies as wedding favors offers guests a tasty treat that will not go to waste.
DIY vs. Purchased Cookie Favors
Making cookie favors is a great way to save money, but many brides and grooms want professional looking results with intricate details. Decide whether going the DIY route or purchasing them yourself is best for your wedding.
Do It Yourself Cookies
Cookies can be a cute and cheap wedding favor if you do them yourself. The cookies themselves can be made several weeks in advance and frozen, leaving decorating and packaging to the day or two before the wedding. Making them yourself puts a personal touch on the cookies and allows you to use a cherished family recipe.
While DIY cookies are cheap, they are not necessarily a hassle-free favor. Decorating cookies is a time-consuming task just several days before the wedding, and is not something a novice decorator should undertake for such an important occasion.
Purchased Cookies
Purchasing cookies from a local bakery is an excellent choice for many busy brides and grooms who want flawless results without any stress. Brides and grooms just have to choose the cookie they desire, decorations and pay and pick it up. Professional bakeries may also have special options, such as turning an engagement photo into an edible image, which you cannot recreate at home.
Cookies from a bakery have their downside, too. The cookies are often more expensive than if you had made them yourself. Additionally, you may not have much license for personalization.
Decorated Cookie Wedding Favors
The theme of decorated cookies for wedding favors depends on what your preferences. Ideas include:
- General Wedding Symbols: Use wedding cake cookie cutters or cutters in the shape of bells, rings, doves, hearts, bride and groom figures or even a church or religious icon for your cookie favors. Decorate the cookies to look like the symbol they represent.
- Wedding Theme: If your wedding has a theme, use that in the cookie favor shape and decorations. Find a motorcycle cookie cutter and decorate it like your own two-wheels at a motorcycle wedding, use your wedding colors on a butterfly cookie cut-out for a garden wedding theme and try making a sailboat for a nautical themed wedding.
- Wedding Season: Seasonal wedding favors are popular because it makes finding them easy, and it's no different for decorated cookies, either. Decorate snowflake cookies in the winter with edible white glitter, make maple leaves in vibrant fall colors for an autumn wedding, tulips in the spring, and a sun or flip-flops shaped cookies in the summer.
Make decorated cookies into personalized wedding favors by decorating the favors with your monogram, last names, first names, and/or wedding date and using wedding colors for icing decorations. This is a good way to turn a simple round cookie into a decorated cookie favor for your wedding without the hassle of intricate designs if you are doing them yourself or want to save money on purchased cookies.
Decorated cookies for wedding favors can do double-duty at a wedding, serving as not only the favor but also letting guests know their seating assignment. Use large round or rectangular cookies and write each guest's first name and last initial with their table seating assignment below it.
Finally, remember to package your decorated cookies so guests can take them home if desired. Use clear wedding favor bags to show off the decorated design. Tie a small curling ribbon around the top and attach a favor tag. If the cookies are homemade, consider adding the recipe to the back of the card. If you want a favor that will last longer than just a few bites and have a few extra dollars to spend, include a shaped cookie cutter for each guest with the cookie itself. No matter how you package them, the decorated cookie favors are sure to be a tasty way to show guests what they mean to you at your wedding.
