Build a Perfect Welcome Bag for your Wedding's Overnight Guest
Updated: Sep 20
There is a high chance you won't be able to greet all your guests upon their arrival at your hotel block. Instead of a personal greeting, give them a welcome bag full of goodies that will let them know you are glad they are there!
When creating our welcome bags, we wanted them to be useful and filled with personal favorites of ours. From local establishment recommendations to highlighting facts about us as a couple, we assembled the perfect welcome bag that gave our guests a sense of the weekend. Check out our breakdown of everything we included and what you can consider when building your own welcome bag!
Presentation is Key
Find a bag or tote that will hold all your items, while keeping the theme of your wedding. We went simple with a plain white gift bag that said "welcome" in rose gold foil. We also added a burlap ribbon on the string to keep the warm rustic theme of our wedding.
Welcome Bag 1 | Welcome Bag 2 | Ribbon
Essential Ingredients
The whole idea behind a welcome bag is to make your guests feel more comfortable during their stay. And what says comfort better than SNACKS! We filled our bag with sweet and savory snacks that would hold people over for dinner or fulfill a hankering for a late-night snack. We filled our bag with an assortment of chocolates and a snack bag of Terra's Sweet Potato chips, highlighting Joe's sweet tooth and my salty cravings.
Something to Sip
Keep your guest hydrated with a drink or two. You can even add a custom label to show off your wedding colors, hashtag, and add a cute message. We added a small bottle of Natural Spring Water and a mini bottle of our favorite champagne, both with a custom label. We even threw in a plastic stemless wine glass for convenience.
Stemless Wine Glass | Champagne Custom Label | Custom Water Bottle Labels
The Local Lowdown and Event Lineup
Help your guest stay fully informed with all the details of your wedding as well as help them enjoy their downtime with a list of the area's must-sees and dos.
We created a brochure using Canva, which included a welcoming note, a timeline of the wedding day, and addresses for the event, as well as addresses for restaurants, bars, and cafes nearby. We also included a couple of phone numbers as a "wedding contact" just in case anyone had any questions during the weekend and couldn't get in touch with us. More importantly, we kept it fun and personalized by adding a word search and fun facts throughout.
If you are looking for more of a traditional and simple look, check out the design we made for my sister's wedding. She didn't want to include as much information as Joe and I did in our welcome brochure. That is the beauty of making your own! You can add as much or as little as you want, as well as make the design match your wedding theme. We linked both templated below the design examples if you are interested in using either or. We got ours printed at our local print shop about a week before the wedding, giving us time to change anything last minute if needed.
Helping Hand
Create a special emergency kit, complete with Advil, mouthwash, stain remover pen/wipes, lip balm, and anything else you think your guest may need in a pinch. For purchasing these supplies, we turned to Etsy to make it creative and visited our local Bed, Bath, and Beyond! Our store has a large section of travel-sized items, plus they allow you to use coupons for those purchases! A lot of retailers and pharmacies don't allow that in our area.
A Delivery Plan
If you are planning to make a welcome bag, be sure to also plan out how your guests are going to get them. Some hotels have a policy about hanging out welcome bags. In our case, the hotel handed them out for free but would have charged us per bag if they were customized and needed to go to certain people. These are definitely details you are going to want to map out before you finalize your bag, so ask first! There is always the option to enlist family members or members of the wedding party to distribute your bags to your guest as well!
For more wedding ideas and tips, explore our Wedding Planning section!