Weddings Are Supposed to Bring People Together

Planning a wedding can be a very stressful event but there are some aspects of planning a wedding which can be a great deal of fun. Selecting wedding favors can be one of the aspects which can be fun. Many brides and grooms may spend a great deal of time, energy and money planning on the location and the food for their wedding but they may not realize the wedding favors they give out can be a very important part of the wedding planning. This is because the wedding favor is the one item the guests take home and will therefore be the one item which the guests remember for the rest of their lives. For as long as they have your wedding favor, it will serve as a reminder of your wedding day. Keeping this in mind you will want to select a wedding favor which is truly unique. And one that will definitely be remembered!

Books can make a really unique wedding favor. Most people do not think of giving books as wedding favors but they can make great wedding favors. This is especially true if you select a book which either suits the theme of the wedding or a book which is a good representation of the love you and your new spouse share for each other. For example a book of love poems which you and your partner find particularly inspiring can make a great wedding favor.

Charitable donations made in the name of your guests are another unique idea for a wedding favor. Traditional wedding favors include knick knacks or other items which are not very useful. These types of wedding favors often become clutter in the homes of your friends or family members, may be discarded or sold in a garage sale after a short period of time but a gift suchas a donation to a favorite charity is likely to be more special to your guests.

Items such as t-shirts with the name of the bride and groom and the date of the wedding also make unique wedding gifts. These are not common but they are certainly a gift which will serve as a reminder of your wedding day. Your guests will not likely wear their favors while they are out running errands or a night out on the town but they may wear them around the house. You can make these gifts more personalized by choosing colors specifically for each gift or giving different styles of t-shirts to different guests. Or maybe you want to match the T-shirts with your wedding theme. You can even use permanent marker to write a brief message to each guest on the shirt to make the gift more special.

Another unique wedding favor idea is a gift of spices. This can work well with your theme if it focuses on cooking or may be appropriate even if your wedding does not have a particular theme. Try attaching a ribbon to each spice with a short note about how love is the spice of life. This play on words can help to make the favor appropriate for a wedding. However, it is also a gift your guests are likely to appreciate because it is really something they can use. Unlike many other types of favors which may not be very useful, a favor of spices is a great idea which is both unique and useful. “Weddings are supposed to bring people together, and so are religious traditions,” says wedding artwork entrepreneur Melissa Dinwiddie, explaining her decision to defy tradition by offering Jewish ketubot, Quaker marriage contracts and other traditional wedding documents to non-Jewish, interfaith, and same-sex couples-and, indeed, to any couple who wants to memorialize their nuptials with wedding artwork drawn from their spiritual tradition.

Jewish herself, and an internationally recognized calligraphic artist, Dinwiddie built her successful business, Ketubahworks, by first mastering the traditions and language conventions associated with ketubot, the documents signed at Jewish weddings. Beginning in 1996, she offered hand lettered, custom ketubot that honored the Jewish custom of beautifying religious objects, creating illuminated works of art that couples display in their homes. She was never focused exclusively on Jewish weddings-in fact, her first finished piece was for her best friend’s Christian wedding. But as her business expanded, the number of requests from non-Jewish and non-traditional couples surprised her. Many had been turned away by other ketubah vendors. “I was raised in an interfaith home myself,” she says, “and I was a little shocked when I realized that many ketubah [ketubah is singular, ketubot is the plural] artists were saying no to couples that didn’t seem ‘Jewish enough’ to them.” To help these couples, Dinwiddie wrote custom vows for interfaith, non-Jewish, and same-sex marriages, and learned to work with progressive rabbis willing to break with tradition. “I never felt I was defying orthodoxy,” she says, “that wasn’t the point at all. If someone wants a perfectly kosher traditional text that pleases their very conservative rabbi, I work with them until it’s exactly right-and beautiful. But if they want something else, something new, I’ll do that too.”

She soon realized she’d tapped into something big. The vows she’d written were a hit, and she soon had to scale back her custom work in favor of prints made from her most popular work-she now offers 15 unique designs and is continually creating more. She learned to work with gicle printers in order to produce archival quality prints with custom texts, and she adapted her art to suit couples from all backgrounds and religions. “I can turn any couple’s wedding vows into a work of art, whether they’re religious or totally secular. I’ve even created a few pagan documents,” she says. To produce the best looking documents possible, she’s worked with type designers to produce unique fonts based on her award winning Hebrew and Roman alphabet calligraphy.

And she got on the internet early. “Ketubahworks.com and WeddingArtworks.com are the cornerstones of my business,” says Dinwiddie, whose offerings go beyond the wedding vow artworks to include invitations based on her art. “The invitations can coordinate with the wedding artworks, or stand on their own.” And this year she’s added another coordinating item: silk chuppah canopies, which the wedding couple traditionally stands under during a Jewish ceremony. True to form, however, Dinwiddie offers her canopies to any couple, Jewish or not, who finds the custom resonates with them and wants to incorporate it into their wedding.

Melissa Dinwiddie is a leading wedding document design expert. For more information visit www.mddesignworks.com.

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Weddings Are Supposed to Bring People Together

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