30 Unique But Useful Wedding Favors Real Couples Gave Their Guests

These clever party favors won't be left behind.

Photo: Khaki Bedford Photography

Updated Jan 30, 2024

You've poured your heart and soul into making every detail of your wedding extraordinary, so why not extend that attention to detail to the party favors? Similar to the venue, attire and entertainment, unique wedding favors are another great way to infuse personality into your big day. These small gifts not only express your gratitude to guests for celebrating with you, but also serve as cherished souvenirs, encapsulating the essence of the celebration. Naturally, you wouldn't want them left behind and a key way to avoid that is by opting for not just unique, but also useful wedding favors. To inspire your search for the best wedding favor ideas, we've compiled a list of party favors people actually want that real couples have successfully handed out to guests.

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1. Olive Oil Escort Card Wedding Favors

Whether as a nod to a destination celebration or as a reflection of the couple's culinary interests, olive oil is a unique wedding gift for guests. It combines practicality with symbolism, and its long shelf life ensures enjoyment well beyond your special day. The option to customize bottles with custom labels adds an extra-personalized touch to the favors. As an example, this couple creatively paired mini bottles of rosemary-infused olive oil, doubling as escort cards, with individual olive loaves from a local bakery. In this way, they were able to bring local flavor into their wedding, creating a memorable and cohesive experience for their guests.

2. Cheese Board and Wine Wedding Favors

Inspired by a couple who served a seven-course meal at The Caramel Room in St. Louis, Missouri, this rustic favor idea of a cheese board and bottle of wine resonates with a celebration centered around culinary delights. For a personal touch, each board was actually engraved with the couple's shared monogram and the wine bottle had a custom label. We love the idea of a pun-filled tag attached to this unique pair of wedding souvenirs that says: "You meat the world to us—thanks for brie-ing here!" Your guests can use it for every future charcuterie night.

3. Candle Wedding Favors

Candles are one of our favorite ideas for unique wedding favors because scent is actually linked to memory. Gifting candles allows couples to share a sensory experience with their guests, leaving a lasting impression associated with the special day. Whether it's the notes of vanilla like your wedding cake or eucalyptus to match your floral arrangements' greenery, these scents become an olfactory memento, ensuring that the day is forever ingrained in the hearts and minds of those who attended.

4. Matchbox Wedding Favors

For a cost-effective, yet practical wedding favor, consider gifting guests customized matchboxes. Personalize the design to make them unique to your special day by choosing colors that go with your decor or adding your names or clever puns, like "We found our match" and "Lights of our life." This idea is particularly appealing if you're planning a sparkler exit, as guests can put the matches to use right away.

5. Loose-Leaf Tea Wedding Favors

Tea proves to be a delightful wedding favor choice for guests, especially fitting for a garden-themed celebration. Not only does it offer aromatic charm, but it also provides a comforting and enjoyable drink for guests to savor as they wind down the night. This couple took a creative approach, pairing loose-leaf tea charmingly packaged in test tubes with heart-shaped tea strainer spoons. The combination of this edible wedding favor with a practical, permanent tool ensures that guests can fondly recall the wedding when they reach into their own tea stashes.

6. Honey Wedding Favors

This couple sent every guest home with a jar of Tupelo honey—a treat that's local to their wedding location in northwest Florida. Beyond its regional charm, honey jars make excellent wedding favors, particularly for a spring celebration. Its natural sweetness mirrors the blossoming season and the newlyweds' love, adding a touch of warmth and flavor to the guests' experiences.

7. Custom Camping Mug Wedding Favors

A coffee mug is a particularly useful wedding favor, since its practicality ensures that guests can incorporate it into their daily routine. Besides just the ability to be personalized with a design, they're versatile enough to suit a variety of wedding themes. For instance, this couple chose a campfire mug to fit their woodland wedding in Vermont. You could also choose insulated travel cups for a destination affair or copper mugs, if you prefer Moscow mules to coffee.

8. Blanket Wedding Favors

Blankets are a practical wedding favor, offering warmth both literally and metaphorically. They'll keep guests cozy during an outdoor ceremony in the late fall or winter as well as beyond the wedding day when they want to snuggle up with their own partner. We especially love the variety of clever signs that can be used to display the blankets, like "to have and to hold in case you get cold" and "your presence warmed our hearts, now let us return the favor."

9. Winter Accessory Wedding Favors

Cold-weather weddings can inspire lots of wedding favors that are pretty unique. Aside from blankets, winter accessories like scarves, mittens or, in this couple's case, beanies can keep guests warm throughout the entire season. These colorful knit hats are each stitched with the names of popular ski destinations as a reminder of their celebration's theme.

10. Custom Illustration Wedding Favors

Live painters have become increasingly popular at weddings, and for good reason. They serve as both entertainment and unique favors for guests. Artist Emma Lang, pictured above, specializes in creating marker illustrations of each wedding guest. This personalized approach results in one-of-a-kind keepsakes that surpass the charm of a traditional photo.

11. Air Plant Wedding Favors

For an eco-friendly wedding favor, consider gifting air plants to your guests. Unlike succulents, air plants don't need soil, making them convenient and easy for guests to take home, requiring only weekly watering for care. One couple creatively placed their air plants in seashells, reflecting the theme of their California wedding. They said friends and family continue to send them photos and stories of their plants' life journey, creating an ongoing connection.

12. Personalized Tote Bag Wedding Favors

Hosting a beach wedding? A tote bag is a must-have wedding favor for guests! Gift it alone so they have a place to carry their sunscreen and pool towels or fill it with other small goodies like snacks, can coolers and sunscreen. Plus, the customizable nature of tote bags allows couples to infuse a unique and personal touch to the souvenirs, from selecting fabrics that match the wedding theme to incorporating names, dates or meaningful quotes into the design.

13. Luggage Tag Escort Cards and Wedding Favors

Luggage tags serve as a clever and practical choice for a destination wedding favor. This couple even had theirs double as an inventive escort card! They'll ensure that guests embark on their post-celebration adventures with confidence, knowing their suitcase will arrive at the destination with them—and with a dash of the couple's charm always tagging along!

14. Glass Heart Ornament Escort Cards and Wedding Favors

Hearts, the ultimate symbol of love, naturally find a special place at weddings. For this couple's destination wedding in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, they aimed to capture the beauty of the locale through thoughtful details. Handpicking artisanal gifts from local vendors, including delicate glass heart ornaments, they added a touch of regional charm to their celebration. The transparent colored glass beautifully caught the sunlight, casting enchanting reflections throughout the venue. These ornaments, gifted to guests, became a lasting reminder of the wedding's sentimentality, enhancing their holiday decorations with a cherished piece of the couple's love for years to come.

15. Stone Coaster Wedding Favors

Quality favors can be the difference between guests leaving them at the reception and taking them home. Instead of paper coasters that would be thrown out after one use, this couple opted for personalized stone coasters that would last their guests a lifetime. Each had a West Virginia motif to commemorate the wedding location, making it personal to the couple's day.

16. Personalized Wine Charm Place Cards and Wedding Favors

Custom wine charm place cards and wedding favors

Raise a glass to the stars of the wedding favor scene—wine charms personalized with each guest's name! Beyond a thoughtful touch of individuality, these small gifts solve the age-old "Is this my glass?" dilemma. The practicality extends beyond the celebration, as guests can use these charming mementos whenever they host their own gatherings—here's to hoping you'll be on the guest list!

17. Cookbook Wedding Favors

If you're feeling really stumped on how to choose wedding favors, think of your interests as a couple. For instance, this original wedding favor idea is a custom cookbook of the couple's favorite recipes. Not only does it reflect the couple's hobbies and shared moments, but it also becomes a lasting token that guests can use daily. Any wedding favor that gives guests a taste of the couple's relationship is a unique and memorable idea in our book.

18. Cookie Mix Wedding Favors

In a similar fashion, this couple gifted their guests their favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Each mason jar was carefully filled with premeasured dry ingredients and then tagged with instructions on how to transform the mix into delectable confections. This creative twist on edible wedding favors meant guests weren't just treated to dessert, but to an engaging experience. The use of the couple's "secret" family recipe added an extra layer of warmth, making guests feel especially cherished to be privy to such intimate details.

19. Handmade Pot Holder Wedding Favors

This couple knew they wanted wedding favors their guests would actually use, so the idea of pot holders was born. The bride actually handmade each with her mom just like they used to do together when she was young. (Cue the "awws.") Handmade wedding favors are especially unique and thoughtful gestures to guests, since they're a symbol of the couple's time, effort and creativity, making each favor a truly heartfelt token of appreciation.

20. Martini Shaker Wedding Favors

While couples have likely considered customized shot glasses, pint glasses or wine glasses as practical wedding favors, here's a unique twist: personalized martini shakers. This couple even threw in some olive picks. Raising the bar on creative and functional favors, this unexpected choice will coordinate seamlessly with signature wedding cocktails, like martinis. This favor can even be printed with a unique design like the couple's names or a motif to the wedding theme so guests don't just get a stylish bar accessory, but a reminder of the special day.

21. Customized Sneaker Wedding Favors

This unique and usable wedding favor truly knocks our socks off! To guarantee that guests hit the dance floor in both style and comfort, this couple generously gifted everyone a custom pair of Converse shoes. It's a no-brainer that guests will use the ever-popular sneaker long after the wedding day. We especially love that it added a colorful backdrop in an otherwise industrial setting.

22. Handkerchief Wedding Favors

For all the happy tears that accompany heartfelt moments, handkerchiefs prove to be a unique party favor for weddings. These delicate and thoughtful keepsakes not only add a touch of elegance to the celebration, but also serve as essential tools for your easily moved family and friends. Couples have the flexibility to infuse their wedding aesthetic into the favor with carefully chosen fabric materials, prints and even custom embroidery to make these handkerchiefs a personalized and cherished memento for their guests.

23. Mood Ring Wedding Favors

As classic symbols of commitment, rings make a fitting party favor for weddings. Make the gesture extra playful with mood rings that'll totally fit a colorful, 70s-inspired celebration like this one. Here's hoping everyone's rings turn a shade of blue or purple, which indicates happiness.

24. Beaded Mirror Wedding Favors

Add a touch of glamor to your celebration with this unique wedding giveaway idea: compact mirrors. The portable accessories will come in handy as guests check for food in their teeth after dinner or freshen their makeup. Then, they can tuck them in their pockets or purses for lots of future use. This couple really brought the glitz with the bejeweled outer cases on these compacts.

25. Hand-Painted Elephant Indian Wedding Favors

Wedding favors have the power to serve as a special bridge between a couple's heritage and the collective celebration. For instance, this couple presented each guest with a hand-painted elephant alongside their escort card. Particularly significant in the Indian tradition, elephants symbolize perfect wisdom and pure hearts. This thoughtful gesture not only adds a unique touch to the celebration, but also provides an opportunity for all guests to appreciate and understand the deeper cultural significance of these symbolic tokens.

26. Gold Chopstick Wedding Favors

Embracing their multicultural traditions, this couple crafted a unique wedding favor for their guests: reusable, gold-hued chopsticks. The utensil honored the groom's Chinese heritage, while the intentional metallic color nodded to gold being a symbol of celebration in both the groom's Chinese background and the bride's Sri Lankan culture. Each set of chopsticks came with a heartfelt note that read: "From us to you, for your future hotpot and dumpling nights."

27. Cute Enamel Pin Wedding Favors

Enamel pins are trendy wedding favors that offer couples a playful way to express their personalities and wedding theme. The small, yet impactful accessories can be tailored to reflect the couple's interests, hobbies or even specific elements of their love story. This couple chose a cactus pin to represent their wedding location—Hutto, Texas. Guests can wear them proudly on bags, hats, lanyards and more to showcase their connection to the couple's special day.

28. Sunglasses Wedding Favors

Hosting an outdoor wedding in the middle of summer? Sunglasses will be a stylish and functional wedding favor for guests. This couple added a playful touch by customizing the sunnies with their wedding's logo, a tandem bicycle, and displaying them under a sign that declared: "Let Love Shine."

29. Lottery Ticket Wedding Favors

Lottery tickets are a thrilling wedding favor for guests. After all, who wouldn't want to win thousands of dollars—or even just two? This couple added a card with each ticket that humorously referenced the common wedding vow, "for richer, for poorer."

30. Hangover Kit Wedding Favors

For a useful wedding favor that truly considers the guest experience, give all of your 21+ friends and family hangover kits. Typically filled with items like pain relievers, electrolyte drinks, mints and snacks, they'll help alleviate any postwedding discomfort so everyone can make it to your send-off brunch. It's a humorous, yet caring gesture that showcases the couple's consideration for their guests' well-being. In fact, couples may want to keep a kit or two for themselves.