Hello, friends! Can you believe it has been two months since we tied the knot?! I thought it would be fun to share the welcome bags that my mom and I put together for our out-of-town guests. As I’ve previously mentioned, most of our guests were from out-of-town, and as I knew I wouldn’t be able to hug each guest as they arrived, I was adamant on creating a bag full of goodies to thank them for making the trip for our special day!

I began to brainstorm ideas of what to include, how it should look and how much I wanted (read: could) financially invest into these surprise gifts. After some thought, I decided that I wanted to give them a glimpse of life on the shore, with some favorite local treats!

Each bag contained Old Bay Crab Chips, a packet of Black-Eyed Susan seeds (Maryland’s state flower!), salt water taffy from Dolles’ at Rehoboth Beach, directions from the ceremony to reception, a list of our favorite local places, and a wine glass from Harvest Ridge Winery. I was so pleased with how they turned out, I made sure I set aside a bag for myself!

One of the pros of designing my own wedding stationery (spoiler: more on this later!), was that I was able to keep the monogrammed crest on all of our paper products! For all who know me know that I am a huge fan of pretty paper, so naturally I didn’t want to keep my wedding paper products limited to our invitation suite. I included a welcome letter to the guests that, even as heartfelt as it was, couldn’t grasp my immense gratitude for all who made it to our wedding. On the back on the letter, Jody and I created a list of our favorite local restaurants and such for guests who were looking to stretch their legs (and bellies!). On the opposite side of the directions card, my sister took my measly sketch that I created of both of our venues, the hotel, and where we were hosting our rehearsal dinner and turned it into a beautiful map artwork. I wanted to make sure our guests were prepared for their stay and travel to each of our events, especially since I knew cellular service near the reception wasn’t reliable and you always need to know where is there best place to get ice cream. 🙂

While I loved how the paper products turned out, I still think the Maryland details were my favorite. While finding the Crab Chips were not as easy as anticipated, they were so worth it. Originally, I had planned on having something salty and something sweet, but after considering the wine and cake that we were providing at the wedding, I thought salty snacks would be more appreciated (by the time we got to our hotel that night, I was really kicking myself for not having a bag of chips for us!). The seeds were actually hard to find too, considering Black Eyed Susan’s are the State’s flower. I loved the idea of our guests being able to take a little piece of Maryland home with them too!

We dropped the bags off at the hotel on the morning we knew guests would start arriving, and had them labeled with the guest’s name to help out the hotel staff. From there, the hotel handed them to the guests as the checked in over the course of the next few days. I appreciate Best Western for working with us to make our guests visit to Denton even more pleasant, with some tangible memories to take when the weekend was over. We hope our guests enjoyed their visit to our little corner of the world!