You love the idea of handmade wedding favours. You do not love the idea of spending every evening for three months hunched over a glue gun questioning your life choices.
Fair enough. Here are DIY favour ideas that are genuinely achievable in a weekend — even if you’re not particularly crafty, even if you’re making 80 of them, and even if you leave it slightly later than you meant to.
Saturday Morning: The Easy Wins
These are your “put a podcast on and get through the lot” favours. Minimal skill, minimal equipment, maximum charm.
Wildflower seed packets. Buy wildflower seeds in bulk, print or stamp small envelopes with something like “Watch our love grow” or “Let love bloom,” and fill each one with a teaspoon of seeds. You can easily do 100 in a couple of hours. Total cost for 80 guests: around £10–£15.
Tea bag favours. Buy good quality tea bags — Yorkshire Tea if you want to lean into the British thing — and pop each one in a small glassine envelope with a printed tag. “The perfect blend” and “Love is brewing” are the classic lines, and they’re classics for a reason. Quick, cheap, and useful.
Bags of pick ‘n’ mix. Grab cellophane bags, a bulk box of retro sweets, and ribbon in your wedding colours. Fill, tie, done. It’s almost impossible to make these look bad, and guests of all ages love them. Set up a little production line and you’ll fly through them.
Personalised seed pencils. These come ready-made — you just need to attach a tag. Buy seed pencils in bulk online, print a simple tag with your names and date, hole-punch it, and thread it onto each pencil with twine. About as simple as DIY gets.
Saturday Afternoon: Kitchen Projects
These need a bit of cooking but nothing complicated. If you can follow a recipe, you can do these.
Fudge. A standard batch of vanilla fudge makes around 40–50 pieces and takes roughly an hour including setting time. Make two or three batches across the afternoon and you’ve got enough for a big wedding. Cut into squares, wrap in wax paper, and place in small boxes or bags. Ingredients for three batches will cost you under £20.
Spiced sugar or flavoured salt. Mix caster sugar with vanilla, cinnamon, or lavender. Or blend sea salt with dried rosemary, lemon zest, or chilli flakes. Spoon into tiny jars or corked glass bottles, add a label, and you’ve got a favour that looks like it came from a deli. The ingredients are pantry staples and the jars are the main cost — about 50p–£1 each in bulk.
Hot chocolate spoons. Melt chocolate, dip in wooden spoons or lollipop sticks, and coat with mini marshmallows, crushed candy cane, or sprinkles before it sets. Wrap in cellophane once firm. They look incredibly impressive for something that takes about two minutes each.
Infused olive oil or vinegar. Add herbs, garlic, or chilli to small bottles of olive oil or white wine vinegar. They need a week or two to infuse properly, so if you’re reading this with a fortnight to go, start today and they’ll be ready. Beautiful with a hand-lettered label.
Sunday: Assembly & Finishing Touches
This is where your favours go from “homemade” to “did you get these from a boutique?”
Keep packaging consistent. Choose one style and stick with it across all your favours. Brown kraft boxes, white bags with a wax seal, or simple cellophane with a satin ribbon — consistency makes everything look intentional and polished.
Add a personal tag. Print or stamp tags with your names, your wedding date, and a short message. “Thank you for sharing our day” is simple and sincere. Attach with twine, ribbon, or a mini peg.
Set up a production line. Seriously, this is the key to finishing on time. Lay everything out, do one step at a time across all favours (fill all bags, then tie all ribbons, then attach all tags), and you’ll be done in a fraction of the time it takes doing them one by one.
Recruit help. This is a genuinely lovely thing to do with your bridesmaids, your mum, or your partner. Open a bottle of something, put some music on, and make it part of the wedding experience rather than a chore. Some couples say the favour-making evening turned out to be one of their favourite memories from the whole planning process.
A Quick Reality Check
DIY favours are brilliant, but be honest with yourself about your time and energy. If you’re three weeks out, stressed to the eyeballs, and the thought of making 100 of anything makes you want to cry — just buy them. There are loads of affordable ready-made options that look every bit as thoughtful. Nobody will know or care whether you made them yourself.
The best wedding favour is one that doesn’t add to your stress. If making them sounds fun, go for it. If it sounds like one more thing on an already overwhelming list, give yourself permission to skip the DIY and spend that weekend doing something you actually enjoy.
Need more inspiration? Browse our 20 budget-friendly favour ideas or read our guide to edible wedding favours with a British twist.