One of the things that I wanted to do for our wedding was to prepare welcome baskets for all of our guests. I made up a fun girl themed basket for each of Frank's (and now my) three nieces and then made grown-up baskets for the rest of the wedding guests.
For the nieces (who Frank and I refer to as the Niecelets) I made up a basket in each girl's favorite color of purple, yellow and pink.
I had found the metal baskets at Target in the One Spot a while back. They were all hot pink so I used some spray paint to turn one purple and another one pink. When spray painting metal mesh like these baskets I have found it is important to spray it upside down, right side up and from different angles in order to get coverage over the whole mesh.
To assemble the baskets I crumpled a few sheets of white tissue paper to place in the bottom and then layered the goodies in the basket on top. I had a lot of fun shopping for the color coordinated items for the girls. Here is what each of the baskets contained:
- Flower lei
- Flip flops
- Glow in the dark bracelets
- Water bottles with twisty straws
- Dried Berry Cherry Blend from Traverse Bay Fruit Co.
- Double Dark Chocolate Cherry Boomchunka Cookies from Cherry Republic
- Jump rope
- Stuffed animal
- Spiky, wiggle ball
- Three flavored lip glosses
On the front of each basket I wired some nylon flower and butterfly embellishments to dress up the baskets a bit more for fun. I thought they turned out really cute.
For the adults I decided to go with a cherry theme since Northern Michigan is famous for their cherries. In fact the Traverse City airport, which our out of state guests flew in to, is called the Cherry Capital Airport.
I found the baskets in the organization aisle at Meijer. They are woven onto a metal frame so I knew they would be strong enough to support the drinks that I had in the basket. Each of the baskets contained the following:
- Cherry postcard from Cherry Republic
- Michigan's Traverse Bays and Mackinac Island Guide Book
- Greetings from Traverse City postcard
- Bottle of water
- Dried Berry Cherry Blend from Traverse Bay Fruit Co.
- Double Dark Chocolate Cherry Boomchunka Cookies from Cherry Republic
- Henry Weinhard's Black Cherry Cream Soda
- Small tube of 30 SPF sunscreen
- Cherry Almond Oatmeal Soap from Cherry Republic
- Sparkling Cranberry Cherry Juice
To assemble everything I put a layer of white crinkle cut paper on the bottom of the basket and then nestled all of the items inside. I wrote notes to all of our guests and put their names on the outsides of the envelopes using fonts that matched our wedding invitations.
I put together the Niecelet baskets in advance, but since the car was going to be full of wedding items I left the seven adult baskets unassembled so that I could pack everything in a way to save space. Because I did a dry run at home to see how I would put everything together it only took about ten minutes to assemble the baskets once we got to the Inn. I was really happy with how the baskets turned out and all of our guests loved them.