Wedding Welcome Bags

Since we had so many guests joining us from out of town for our big day, I wanted to do something special for those folks.  The months leading up to the wedding I was thinking about ideas for welcome bags and also searching the Internet for good ideas.  I was thinking along the lines of something like this -- where I could utilize my scrapbook materials in making the tags, but it just wasn't quite feeling like what I was looking for.  

  

Then, last October, we made a trip to Rock City.  In the gift shop, they had the most adorable black reusable totes with white print talking about the formations at Rock City (right across from our wedding venue on Lookout Mountain).  We knew a lot of out of towners would hit up this popular attraction so it became the PERFECT bag for our wedding welcome bags.  

I knew I wanted to feature the items that are made in and around Chattanooga so I spent several weeks rounding up those items.  Mom called the Chattanooga Visitor Center and they were beyond helpful!!!  They told us that they would give us FREE mini moonpies, Chattanooga pens and literature including coupons and maps!  Score!  I included fun size packs of M&Ms and Twix bars since they are made in Cleveland (just down the road), Little Debbie oatmeal cakes that are made here in Ooltewah!, 3 different travel size samples of items made at Chattem (lotion, hand sanitizer and shower gel); a letter I wrote about the companies located here and the tie ins with the products in their bags, a Scentsy scent circle (not made here obviously but since I sell Scensty I figured it was a good tie in); bottled water and Altoids (also made here!).  I'm sure there's more but that's all I can think of right now.  Here's a pic from the wedding of it all laid out -- I made little tags for the room numbers for those guests that were staying at the B&B -- for guests at the hotels we couldn't do labels - just had to leave a list with the front desks.  OH!  Since 2 of my bridesmaids were bringing their new babies, I also included "Rock City" baby bibs in their bags - totally cute.  

I'm not sure why the photographer didn't put the bag upright... that's another one of life's mysteries I suppose.

My little niece put together the little bags with Altoids!  She LOVED helping and was such a good little helper.  My mom tied the Altoids bags to the handle of the tote to prevent everything in the bag from smelling and tasting like a mint and then my grandma and I had an assembly line to put everything in the bags!  I think we made up 55 bags.  

Adam and his mom delivered them to the hotels Friday morning and then I dropped off the 19 to Chanticleer Friday afternoon.  They were a big hit with the guests!  I'm glad everyone enjoyed.