a small town wedding: giving gifts.

The part of our rehearsal dinner that I enjoyed the most had to be giving gifts to our bridal party.  I love coming up with creative gifts for people and we had put a lot of thought into what we were giving all of our nearest and dearest.

First up, the girls!  I put together gift bags for them with things they could use on the day of the wedding, but I wanted to make sure they were useful after the wedding as well.

I wrapped each little package up in the extra totes we had made for our OOT bags.  Each one included some stationary, flip flops, and two little things I had designed and made especially for them.

A pearl necklace and bracelet to wear on the wedding day.

And a little clutch to hold their essentials.

Thankfully I had thought ahead and made the clutches and jewelry months in advance, or there was no way I would've been able to finish them all in time!  The girls seemed to love their gifts and I've even seen a few of them use them on other occasions as well.

Next up, the boys.  Guys are hard to buy for.  My husband didn't want to get them anything personalized, no swiss army knives, etc. because they've all been in so many weddings and already received these as gifts.  So we opted for something that was a little bit of an inside joke to all of them.

Photo by Deborah Cull Photography

Chucks and matching green socks!  As I've mentioned, these guys have all been in a lot of weddings.  Each of which have required them to wear those awful rented dress shoes to match their tuxes.  And by the end of the night at every single one of those weddings, all they do is complain about how much their feet hurt.  So we decided what better way to make them happy than to remove the one thing they always hate most about weddings?  (Yes, they still wore dress shoes to the ceremony.  But they took them off immediately after and I never heard a single complaint about their feet hurting!)

So after gifting our best guys and girls, we had two more very important gifts to give.  Our parents helped so much and were so supportive of us during all of our planning, we couldn't help but get them something too.

For my in-laws, who are very into landscaping, we bought a new tree for them to plant in their yard.

For my parents, who are in the process of opening a tavern & grill with a political theme to it (it opens this month!), a huge one-of-a-kind caricature of JFK, painted by my talented cousin.

We were so glad to give our family and friends a little something special to show them how much we appreciated their help and support!  It was a great way to wrap up our rehearsal dinner.  

Next we were off for a little fun with friends, the night was still young and we weren't ready for it to end just yet!

Previously in this series:

a small town wedding: the beginning.