Another consideration with children at weddings is keeping them interested in what is going on or at least quietly distracted with something else whilst the ?boring? stuff is going on! This is where some creative thinking with wedding favors for children will pay dividends.



Wedding favors for children don't have to cost the earth & in many cases may be cheaper to put together than those for the adult guests. Think about including some sort of activity or game that will keep them occupied at least whilst the speeches are happening. That way parents are not struggling to keep bored children quiet or well behaved & you are not worried about some unnecessary & untimely interruptions.

Of course the simple solution would be to give out wedding favors that are suitable for all ages, but this would mainly confine you to edible favors such as cookies or candies. Some parents may not be altogether happy about their children filling up on sugar either & giving this kind of favor doesn't really solve the problem of keeping them occupied.

So which wedding favors for children could you give?

I recently helped a friend of mine with her wedding preparations. I made all the invitations & other stationery & put together favors for the adults. As we both have young children & knowing that there would be several other children present, I suggested that we should come up with some ?special? wedding favors just for them. She wholeheartedly agreed, knowing that having something to keep them occupied during the reception dinner would certainly help her stress levels! So we put our heads together & came up with the following:

Firstly we made a list of all the children who would be there & their respective ages. These ranged from 12 months through to 11 years. The 11 year old we decided would rather appreciate the chocolate favors we had put together for the adults, which reduced the list to ages between 12 months & 7 years.

We had plenty of the little chocolate hearts left so we divided them up, added in some other jelly type sweets & a lollipop each. We decided the best thing was to give them all the same things, so we included little coloring books & packets of crayons, a fun water game each & some bubble mixture (the adults all had champagne bubbles). I wrapped these items up in cellophane wrappers, tied them up with poly ribbon which I curled at the ends & I made some name tags. These were created from flat plastic balloon weights, in different shapes & colors, onto which I wrote the child's names in blue or pink ink.

They looked fantastic & the children were really excited when they opened them to see what was contained inside. Overall they were fairly inexpensive to make up as the games & coloring books came from a party store which sold in bulk quantities. Buying in bulk was a good idea as it meant there were some spares handy should they be needed!

Visit party stores both online & on the high street to see what they have to offer. You can often buy cheaper if you are buying in larger quantities & you will find a great choice of things for all age groups. When it comes to packaging use cellophane bags, printed party loot bags or nice boxes like gable end food boxes which will hold a nice selection of odd sized objects!

If you have put together favors for different aged children make sure you put name tags on them so they don't get given to the wrong child. Children are not as understanding as adults should you try to retrieve it & give them something else!

Another option to keep children occupied is to have a separate table for them all to sit at (check with parents first that this is ok), I would recommend that only children over four years old sit on a separate table & it could be an idea to make the oldest child ?table supervisor? who can keep the others in line! Lay the table with a white paper table cloth & provide them with pens, pencils & crayons so they can draw on it. You may even find printed table cloths at party stores made for this purpose. Afterwards you can cut it up so each child can take home their ?bit?.

Lastly, here are a few tips to consider:

* Don't go overboard on the candy - you don't want loads of hyper active children running riot!

* Check the safety credentials of any toys or games & don't give toys with small moving parts to children under 3 years.

* Check that bubble mixture is child friendly

* Make sure you buy things suited to both girls & boys - boys will not thank you for giving them dolls & likewise girls are unlikely to appreciate racing cars or robots!