What wedding favors would be suitable when the Swiss bridegroom has a large entourage from Switzerland attending a local semi-traditional wedding in tropical Penang Island?
Swiss chocolates, an imported local luxury, would not do! -says the bride, with a chuckle. Ittybitty ‘wedding cake’ squares in disposable cardboard boxes, typical of many local weddings is the comfortable fallback option, albeit boring and bland.
The design challenge was for wedding favors that would leave her Swiss guests charmed-a memento to treasure of a truly special Penang/Malaysian destination wedding experience.
Traditional local pastries/sweets wrapped in lovely batik handkerchiefs-click image to zoom in.
Doubles as placecard, click image to zoom in.
This idea for wedding favors with a local twist, can be adjusted for different budgets. It is a simple idea-to mine the treasure trove of delicious locally-crafted pastries and sweets (Penang is THE local food heaven) and present it in a lovely little Batik (local hand-painted/printed fabric) bundle.
Once the goodies are eaten, the batik wrap would be a wonderful piece of keepsake from the wedding.
Depending on how much the wedding couple would like to spend, it can be heart-warmingly rustic and Do-It-Yourself or luxuriously decadent.
Local pastries and sweets available in Penang are a distinct cottage industry, an age-old art, available only in this rich historical city. The trick for the bride is whether she wants her local guests to receive them as well. Alternatively, home-baked pineapple tarts and cookies (local favorites!) can be substituted for local guests.
They will then be placed in simple hand-folded origami boxes (recycled pretty magazine papers, anything laying around will work!), of course the bigger the budget, the fancier the papers (sustainable sources, hopefully)
There are several alternatives for batik fabrics depending on the budget-lovely sheer, silk hand-printed ones in finished sizes and gorgeous classy colors from local Indian stores for a truly beautiful wrap; a large hand-printed batik fabric sheet from the local Batik factory cut into smaller sizes and serged/hemmed ; or for the DIY bride with a small budget-lovely commercially printed ‘batik-look’ fabrics can be had at affordable prices at local fabric stores. They only need to be serged, inexpensively, by a crafty mom, friend or tailor.
These favors can double as placecards of course, with the addition of a card with a handwritten name or number.
