A Favor Idea

I'm quasi procrastinating paper ideas, but in my defense, I found this in my paper research.

The National Arbor Day foundation has a "gift tree" designed specifically to give as a wedding favor. They come in these nice biodegradable containers (and can be planted, refrigerated until planting time, or grown indoors until planting time). This is the picture they have on the website. As you can see, you can have these customized for your wedding and the labels (since you can't see all of them) look like this:


The saying on the label, from what I can tell, is customizable. I know that they have up to three lines of customization, so I'm assuming the verses in these are the customized labels.

So, I'm already loving the idea, but I love it for several reasons

1. I can order Longleaf Pines. Not only do longleaf pines grow well in most Southern states, they were extremely durable in Katrina. In fact, most of the pines still standing after Katrina were longleaf. Not wanting to dredge up the past, but for those of us who survived Katrina and faced the massive cleanup afterwards, these trees are a sign of durability and survival. Mississippi is still recovering from Katrina, and I think these would be a good way to help out.


2. I hate wedding favors that are totally useless. But, at the same time, I don't like edible favors all that much or favors that you don't want to use. So, I think a tree would be great. You can plant it in your yard and watch it grow while also remembering our wedding. (Yeah, I just don't want anybody to forget our wedding.)


3. They're not extremely expensive. At first I was a bit concerned about this. The trees are $3 each. I was worried that at $3 each for a minimum of 50 people, I was looking at shelling out $150 just for favors. And the purpose of planning your own wedding is to save money. But then I had another thought. I don't have to buy an individual tree for each person, but for each couple, family, etc. This would significantly cut down on the price and still be a great gift.

Besides, even if we decide not to do these as favors for the reception, I think I would at least like to do them as gifts to those extremely close to us (those that warrant a cabin). It would be a great addition to the room gift baskets.

I ran the idea by my darling fiance and got a "We'll see" out of him. That's a lot better than a complete "no." He pointed out that we have one small problem with this idea. Most of our guests don't own their own land, which means that they have nowhere to plant them.

I still think the trees are a great idea. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to overcome the land problem. Perhaps we could donate the trees to the park in honor of our guests. We still have to find out if the park will accept them and have a place to put the trees, but it's the best idea thus far. That way, we could send trees home with the parents and those who have land and donate for those who do not. Perhaps we should require guests buy land to plant these trees on before the wedding (okay, so that's a joke).

By the way, we're trying to find out anonymously what people think of this idea. Please take a second and answer the poll to the right. PLEASE!

I have to get back to work now, but if anybody has ideas for this, please let us know!