Gift Giving: Buying for 200 people

The whole gift giving process is difficult.  It's hard enough to find the perfect gift for one person that you know they'll love, cherish and most of all, use for years to come.  It gets even harder when you're buying for 150-200 of your closest friends and family.  What do you get for said crowd that won't break the bank but also won't end up in the trash can on the way out the door?  The options really are limitless.  There are so so so many great ideas out there, it's just so hard to choose!

I really didn't want to just give something that people would never use.  The whole jordan almond thing is nice and traditional, but not for me. 

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I've also been to a few weddings where they gave out M&M's as favors.  Either personalized or not.  I think it's a cute idea, especially the personalized ones, but I wanted something more original than that. 

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I guess the first thing we needed to decide is whether we were going to DIY or not.  I'm still on the fence about this but for a large wedding, it just doesn't seem as feasible to DIY favors.  There are just too many of them and the benefit of saving money and having a bit more personal of a favor just doesn't outweigh the time cost in my eyes.  But I still swoon over pictures like this one:

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My original idea was to make sugar cookies in the shape of fall leaves (for our October, tree themed wedding) and decorate them with icing.  Something like this.

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I wanted to do a couple different shapes and give each person 2-3 cookies.  Which I am realizing means that I need to make up to 600 cookies to make this happen.  In order to really keep them fresh I'd have to ice them the week of the wedding.  Although I've never done this before, I have a feeling that week will be packed full as it is without having to carefully decorate acorn, pumpkin, and leaf shaped cookies.  So, FI and I decided to rethink this whole DIY favor thing.  We've come up with an idea that I like even better than the cookies and I think will work really well.  I'm super excited about it and I really think our guests will love it.  I'll tell you all about it... on a later post!

Have you gotten a favor at a wedding that you just loved?