The tricky thing about destination weddings is, What to bring?  Suitcase space is limited, but you don’t want to sacrifice your wedding style for luggage economy, so what do you do?  You think smart, that’s what!

One of our favorite little destination wedding tricks is to use custom water bottle labels for wedding favors and Out of Town Bags.  Custom water labels are small, and easy to tuck into a suitcase, but they make a huge impact when guests take a look!

Just order the water labels only, then purchase bottled water/fruit juice/whatever bottled beverage you like once you get to your destination.  Our labels are completely self-adhesive, so they’re a cinch to apply quickly, and they are an easy custom touch to add to your nuptials.

You can use custom labeled beverages at your wedding reception, wedding rehearsal, and in Out of Town Bags.  You can arrange bottles of water artfully around the reception or rehearsal tables, or tuck a few custom bottled waters into the Out of Town Bags.

The best part is, you can put whatever you want on the label!  A photo background of your wedding venue, your engagement photo, your names, a welcome message…The options are endless!

Any bride looking into doing DIY wedding favors ought look no further than custom labels (aka custom wedding stickers).  You can use custom labels to transform anything from store-bought to handmade!  If you have an ambitious list of projects that need to be completed before your big day, you’ll appreciate how fast and easy it is to customize labels using our site.

You can quickly upload engagement photos to your labels, add or change text, and customize the fonts and colors on your label to match the other elements of your wedding vision.  We make it easy to customize labels for the bride who’s short on time.

The great thing about custom labels is, you can use them to customize almost anything.  For example, look at the photo above.  Takeout boxes are adorable, and can be used to house almost any kind of wedding favor.  All it takes to customize those is a custom sticker, and now not only do you have an adorable wedding favor, you have an adorable custom wedding favor.

You can use custom labels to customize table numbers, wedding favor bags, out of town bags, wedding invitations, the possibilities are endless!  If you’re  a DIY bride, we’re sure you can easily come up with even more creative ways to put custom labels to use!  Let us take some of the work off your hands by printing up your creativity for you.  With our reasonable prices and high-quality work, the only thing you’ll be missing out on is the frustration of fighting with your home printer!

Personalized wedding stickers are so much fun.  Not only can you use them in a variety of places at your wedding, you can have a ton of fun designing them!

You can match the colors on these labels to your wedding colors, upload your custom monogram so that your customized wedding stickers match your wedding stationery, or go in a completely different direction and introduce a bold new design into your wedding suite.  With our Design Online tool, you have complete freedom to make your wedding stickers look exactly how you imagined them.

Obviously the sky’s the limit when it comes to how you use these custom labels at your wedding, but here are some ideas we’ve seen other brides and grooms use beautifully:

• Upload your monogram, and then use our custom stickers to seal the invitations for your wedding.  Give your guests a great first impression by making the outside of the envelopes beautiful too!
• Use personalized wedding stickers as bridal shower favor bag seals.  Send your guests home from your wedding shower with a little cellophane bag filled with the bride’s favorite treats, and then seal the bag with a custom sticker that thanks your guests for coming.
• If you’re constructing wedding programs with overlapping pieces of paper, use custom wedding stickers to adhere your programs together.  Custom and practical!
• Candy buffets are extremely popular, so why not put your own personal spin on the concept by providing guests with custom stickers to seal their sweet treats with?  Provide cellophane bags, have your guests fill them up with a selection of you and your beloved’s favorite candies, and then display your custom stickers at the end of the line for guests to use to seal their bags.
• Children love stickers, so put together little kid care packages for the wee ones at your reception.  Provide bags of activities, small toys, crayons, coloring books, and custom wedding stickers at each child’s place setting and then just wait for their parents to thank you!

We’d love to hear from you: How can you imagine using custom wedding stickers in your wedding?

There are so many events you can use favor bags at!  Baby showers, bridal showers, birthday parties, bar and bat mitzvahs; basically, you can use favor bags wherever you need to thank guests for coming to your event.  If you’re feeling slightly more crafty, you can also use favor boxes as well!

You can fill favor bags with a huge variety of tokens of appreciation.  Sometimes the event calls for a little bit of candy, perhaps a selection of the birthday boy or girl’s favorite candies?  Other events call for homemade desserts, like perhaps the bride-to-be’s favorite recipe.

You can also fill favor bags and boxes with bath salts, teas, flower seeds, confetti, or small toys.  It’s very easy to find affordable favor packaging online, and there’s a wide range of styles and colors to choose from.

The one thing that is imperative for making favor bags and favor boxes work for your event is custom stickers.  Our custom favor stickers can feature names, dates, monograms, favorite movie characters, or all of the above, and add a completely personal touch to your favors.

Simply use custom stickers to seal your favor boxes or bags and you’re all set.  Guests will come away from your event feeling thanked for attending, and will certainly notice your attention to detail when they see your custom stickers.

Our custom labels make ideal stickers for favor gift bags.  We offer a variety of sizes and shapes, and our labels have a nice strong adhesive backing so they’ll keep your favors sealed up tight.  You can completely customize the colors, designs, text, and images on our custom labels, so they can match your event’s theme and colors exactly!

If you have any questions about using custom labels as favor gift bag seals, just let us know and we’ll be happy to help you out!

Bride Pop recently published their analysis of the true cost of the average wedding, and the breakdown is extremely illuminating.  Click on the image at the top of this post to enlarge it, or visit the chart over at Bride Pop’s website.

As you can see, the average cost of a wedding ends up with a total akin to something you’d expect to pay for a college degree.  With all the financial frugality we’ve all had to adopt recently, this number can seem daunting and make it feel like you’ll never be able to afford the wedding of your dreams.

Fear not!  This is only a breakdown of the average cost, which means there’s lots of opportunity to cut costs down here and there.  Notice the bottom right part of the pie chart, where it breaks down the cost for favors and gifts.  This is a great place to save some money.

You could use custom water bottle labels to jazz up bottles of water, and then tie ribbons around the necks of the bottles with little tags thanking your guests for coming to your wedding.  Place these on tables near the exits and encourage guests to take them to make the ride home pleasant.  This is an inexpensive and stylish way to cut costs on your favors, and you know your guests will put them to good use!

If you look at the costs for the reception, you’ll notice that you can probably cut down the cost for beverages and bartender by putting open bottles of wine on the reception tables.  Top the bottles off with custom wine labels and you’ve got pretty table decor and beverages all rolled up in one pretty custom package!

If you’d like some more ideas for saving money on your nuptials without sacrificing style, we highly recommend that you start with this article on planning a budget wedding, and then check out The Broke Ass Bride.  The happiest day of your life doesn’t necessarily have to be the most expensive!

Winter is a fabulous time to get married.  Even if you’re tying the knot smack dab in the middle of California (where the winters are really more like suggestions than reality) it’s still a fantastic season to plan your nuptials for.

You can have so much fun with rich fabrics and colors with a winter wedding.  The season naturally lends itself to rich hues and sumptuous accents.  Icicles and snowflakes are a lot of fun to use in decorating, or you can go the opposite way and make good use of cinnamon sticks and candles.

Either way, when you’re planning your wedding don’t forget to put some thought into your wedding favors!  Winter wedding favors are a lot of fun to give away, because you can go in so many different directions.

We’ve seen brides give away bottles of homemade apple cider, with custom wine labels and sticks of cinnamon tied to them.  We’ve also enjoyed weddings where the couple gave away personalized bottles of wine to each couple at their wedding (If you decide to do this, it’s a lot of fun to put a wish on the label that your guests go home and toast the bride and groom).

You could make up packets of mulling spices and hand them out in little packets with custom labels on them, or you could give your guests mini boxes of chocolates with personalized labels thanking them for making your wedding day so special.

The options are limitless.  If you’re planning a winter wedding, congratulations!  If we can help add a custom touch to your wedding please let us know and we’ll be happy to help any way we can.

What they did was to write short bits of trivia about them as a couple on each label design, and I’d be willing to bet guests had a great time looking for all the facts at the reception!  The thing I love about this idea is that it’s so personalized and fun.  What better way to help everyone who comes to your wedding feel included than by giving them little tidbits about your life as a couple?

They ultimately did six designs in all, check out our favorites below! (Click on the image to make it larger)

Ways you can use this idea in your own wedding:

• Order the same label design but include a different tidbit on each sheet of labels.  Share bits of trivia about how you met, hobbies and interests, how you got engaged, honeymoon plans, etc.
• Use trivia answers to build a wedding crossword guests can fill out before the ceremony starts or during the reception.
• Place one bottle at each place setting at your reception, and give each place setting a bottle with a different trivia fact on it.  What a fun way to get a conversation going at each table!

If you have any questions about designing labels like this for your own event, just let us know.  We’re happy to listen to what you have in mind and help you bring it to life!  Thanks so much to Brett and Abby for letting us feature their labels!

Now, if you look at our site you’ll see wine labels and water labels, but no specific mention of mini wine bottle labels.  The reason for this is that you can actually use our small water bottle labels as mini wine bottle labels.  Check it out:

Looking pretty good, huh?    We love those lolly pops tied to the bottles, it makes them look so festive!

The great thing about using our small water bottle labels as mini wine labels is that they wrap all the way around the bottle, so your bottles look great from all angles.  Plus, you have that much more room for pictures, words, whatever you like.  The height of our small water bottle labels is ideal for mini wine bottles, and with our completely self-adhesive labels, it’s simple to apply them.

If you take a look at the water label designs and don’t find any that tickle your fancy, try heading over to the wine labels section.  If you find a wine label design you love, just let us know and we can turn it into a water label for you!  We’re happy to work with you to craft a label that’s perfect for your celebration.

We’re tickled to participate in the contest and we’re offering one of her lucky readers 15 sheets of free custom labels.  That means any label design you want, 15 sheets, customized and delivered to your door.  Easy peasy.

The contest has not officially started yet, this is more of a heads-up for thing to come.  The contest kicks off September 28, so keep checking in with The Broke Ass Bride to find out what you need to do to win custom labels from Bottle Your Brand!

A wonderful way to go the extra mile in making your guests comfortable is the out of town bag or basket (a.k.a. The OOT Bag).  These bags, or baskets, are placed in each out of town guest’s room and supplies them with a few personal touches they may need or want throughout your wedding festivities.  Here are some suggestions to help get you started on creating OOT Bag for your own guests:

• Pain relievers.  Advil, aspirin, ibuprofen, any of these will be welcomed by any guest that suffers a headache or muscle sprain.  You can buy single serving packets of these from Target or any drug store and you can bet your guests will appreciate them!
• Shout Wipes.  There’s nothing like an untimely stain to ruin the perfect wedding outfit!  If you throw some single serving Shout Wipes into your OOT Bags, you could potentially save someone’s favorite outfit!
• Snacks. You can really get creative with this one.  Choose snacks that are special to your area or particular favorites of the bride and groom.  Guests will love this custom touch and yummy food!
• Welcome letter/schedule.  Take some time to personally thank your guests for taking such a long trip to come see you.  This is a wonderful way to start the festivities out in a custom, grateful way.  Include a schedule of festivities, along with a map, to insure your guests know where to be and when.
• Personalized bottled water.  Coordinate the label with your wedding colors and theme.  Not only will this help set the tone of your celebration for your guests, it’ll also provide the added benefit of giving them something to drink that isn’t ridiculously expensive hotel bottled water!

You can buy inexpensive baskets from Michael’s and customize them with a ribbon or fabric that matches your wedding decorations, or buy color-coordinated totes from any wedding favor retailer.  With a few minutes of effort, you’ll make a huge impression on your out of town guests and make them feel truly welcomed.

Will you or have you used OOT Bags?  How did you add your own personal flair?