Are Favors a Must?

Not mandatory anymore. I know a lot of people will do a donation to something meaningful to them (Cancer society if they lost a loved one) and put up a sign. We are just having a hot pretzel exit station.

I definitely don’t think favors are a must-have! As you mentioned, most people forget about them and they go to waste anyway

My friend did succulents, I forgot to grab one.
I’ve seen little seed packets with let love grow or something like that.
I found bottle openers that look like old keys. I really wanted to do these for our wedding, but didn’t want the extra expense and hassle of doing them. At the end of the day I went with Hershey kisses In little baggies. We had so much left over.

Favors are totally optional! If they're not something you feel strongly about, you can certainly skip them, and people won't even notice.

Favors are absolutely not a must! I was super against them as being impractical and expensive, but I ran across a local woman who makes amazing flavored lip balms so I might end up buying some from her to support a local business and give everyone a little treat just because.

My wedding planner has drilled into my head that wedding favors are totally a waste - UNLESS it's something like alcohol, food, candy etc., she says she throws away a sickening amount of favors - especially anything with the bride and groom's name and wedding date written on it.

I think a nice dinner and an open bar is plenty of a favor!

Favors aren't a must-have at all! I think if you want to do them, then your hand sanitizer idea is great! People use that a lot, especially during times like this.

So we kinda have 2 favors. We are doing heart shaped tins of m and ms. It was going to be customized m and ms but they were expensive. They will be sitting on the place settings at the reception. The other thing we are doing is individually packaged masks with personal hand sanitizer that will be put on the individual reception chairs.

*ceremony chairs

Skip them! They are such a waste of money. As you said in your original post, most favors are left behind and forgotten.

Skip them. Not worth the money and most people do not want to take something home with them from a wedding. Most people forget about it. Spend your $$ on something worthwile. Favors aren't it.

Favors are optional. If you want to do them cheaply, I'd recommend small candies or mints, but they're not necessary. If you do want them, then edible favors are the way to go. IMO the only non-edible favor I'd consider useful at the moment would be hand sanitizers. Things like bottle openers and especially koozies generally go right into the garbage (at least in my experience) so I'd avoid those. Of course, favors are entirely optional to begin with so don't sweat it.

They are optional. My fiancé and I are doing Koozie for our favors from Etsy because that is something we see our family and friends using at their houses and it would be nice to have at our wedding for beer and soda cans. If you do favors make sure it’s something people can use otherwise I agree it’s a waste of money.

Favors are absolutely not a necessity and a number of wedding planners who are also bloggers and YouTubers (such as Jaime Wolfer) recommend against them for couples on a budget because they end up being a wasted expense and many get left behind. I say if you can't find anything that really speaks to you, skip em!

Favors have never been mandatory at any point in history. They are always left behind, even edibles. Save your money. The only things guests remember are were the couple gracious host? Was the food good? Did they have to open wallets to drink? Was the dj good?

We skipped them 🤷🏻‍♀️

Definitely skip them. As a guest I would even prefer you NoT have anything (even edible) bc then I feel obligated to take it or feel bad when I forget.

Definitely not a must-have. No one will notice if you don't have them. If you WANT to, i think edible favors are best. Little bags of popcorn, individually wrapped cookies or cake pops, etc.

They're definitely not mandatory and we'll be skipping them. Any good quality favor will run about $5-10 per person generally, so unless you're doing edible favors (like a couple cookies each) they tend to get expensive pretty fast. And you're right about them being forgotten. On average, about 75% of favors get thrown away at the end of the night. Personally, I think most people have enough sanitizer so even that would likely be left behind. If budget is a concern, I'd definitely skip them.

The bottles of hand sanitizer are a great idea.


Favors are never a must have item. You can skip them all together if you choose. We are doing a candy buffet and everyone will get a mason jar to fill up.