One wedding + one bride who loves to give gifts = trouble. Over the last year, I’ve had more than half a dozen different favors picked out. Fortunately, I’m an adamant believer in useful favors, so my prospects were limited to food and practical items. My first love was this luggage tag:

Perfect for all of our out-of-town guests, utterly practical and classically beautiful. But, despite my best attempts, I couldn’t find the source of these specific tags, and all the ones I found were either ugly or unbelievably expensive.

Of course, there’s always repackaged candy in all its lovely forms:

I especially love the last image (thanks, Martha). But then I got distracted thinking about flowers and plants, despite being completely impractical for out-of-towners.

Of course, from the get-go, I’d wanted to do letterpressed wood bookmarks. Originally, I wanted to use those as save-the-dates, but then I thought they’d make great favors. That didn’t seem like enough, so I somehow got the crazy idea to do cookies too — bird-shaped sugar cookies, made with a custom cookie cutter, packaged in glassine bags and sealed with cartouches cut from various papers. When the wedding was still six months out, the idea of baking 200+ cookies a week before the wedding didn’t phase me.

Sometime in January, I went into super strict budget mode — both for our financial budget and for my time budget. We couldn’t afford the bookmarks, and I certainly wasn’t going to have time to bake that many cookies, so I dropped the favors altogether, telling myself that the photo booth pictures and bird magnets and welcome bags would qualify as favors. (Which, by the way, I still think they do.)

When I was in Spokane in February, I found these great miniature chocolate bars:

They come in sets of three, in little boxes. Adorable. The chocolate is delicious, and I’ve used “rejoice” on our website, welcome card, etc. to refer to the wedding and all the pre-wedding festivities, like the wine tasting the day before the wedding and the bachelor(ette) parties. It seemed like fate. But I couldn’t quite swallow the price, even with the generous bulk discount.

So now, eight days before the wedding, I’m back to the cookies. As if I didn’t still have programs to print and assemble, playlists to finalize, vendors to coordinate, welcome bags to deliver, a honeymoon to pack for…

Among all the glass bottles and cake plates, I’ve picked up a few other antiques along the way — a plate here and there, a creamer and sugar, a couple of Fire King sapphire bowls, some little vintage metal trays. But my best find, by far, was this serving set.

Do you see that tag? $4.50. I doubt I could have even found a jewel-cut plastic-handled cake server at Michael’s for that. The server has a serrated edge, so I don’t even need a separate knife. That’s what I call efficient. And you can’t see it in this photo, but the tongs on the right have a scissor-like handle. Not sure if I could actually serve anything with it, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.

I’ve been sitting with my summer 2008 Martha Stewart Weddings for a couple of weeks, and there really are some fabulous finds in there. I must admit I was slightly irritated that one article is talking about being a bride on a budget (aside: anyone else notice the expanded DIY section?) and a few pages later, they’re talking about giving iPods as attendant gifts. (I love my girls, but how does $1,500 for gifts fit into a smaller budget?) But once I got past that, I found some fun music suggestions and downloadable templates. Oh, and the cuff links… Definitely one of the highlights, great variety.

Beautiful cake stands from Clara French Ceramiques. Perfect!

All of a sudden cupcakes are sounding like a mighty fine wedding cake alternative. I’ve always wanted to do individual cakes, but cupcakes may be a less expensive, more practical option.