Destination Wedding Welcome Gift Bags

advil / pepto / tumblers / sunglasses / towels / sunscreen / aloe / SPF chapstick

When you’re planning a destination wedding, one of the things that can be tough to do is the welcome gift. People are traveling a great distance to be with you, so you want to make sure they receive something a bit nicer than at a traditional wedding, but then you have to get allll the things on a plane!

We chose to do custom tumblers as the biggest part of the gift, and then added in some necessities. The tumblers were a suggestion from a friend who had recently been to Mexico and noticed people at the bar filling up YETI tumblers with drinks. Turns out the bartenders at these resorts do not care what they put your drinks in, and the plastic cups they use are wasteful, plus they don’t keep your drinks cold! The tumblers were a huge hit. I would have loved for them to all be YETI, but I had to pay for them so we bought them in bulk on Amazon and they did the trick.

We managed to pack everything in a few suitcases and then assembled the bags once we arrived in Jamaica. I had originally thought I would do a beach tote of some sort to put everything in, but ultimately decided against it, because they added extra cost and extra space. I used these disposable bags with festive tissue paper instead. I probably would have done the beach bags instead of the Turkish towels, because honestly you don’t need towels at all inclusive resorts, they have them everywhere for you, but family bought these to include so we couldn’t leave them out. I think the items we included ended up being useful and people appreciated them.

We included a weekend itinerary and thank you note to all of our guests in the bag. Buying these customizable templates was so great because we were able to use them for several different things at the wedding, including the itinerary, the welcome letter, the welcome signs, and the selfie station signs. In addition, we made a contribution in honor of all of our guests to the Alzheimer’s Association in honor of my mom and used the templates to include a special note.

Typically at weddings I have been to the bride and groom left the welcome gifts at the hotel check-in desk. The Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall, where we got married did not allow for this. Instead they hand delivered each bag to the guests room. This was a nice touch that I think the guests appreciated, but there is a charge for this service. I used these name tags on each bag tied on with gold ribbon, so they would know where to deliver them [this is something I had done ahead of time, I packed the bags with the name tags already tied on]. I ultimately felt like it was worth it though, so no one was wandering around looking for people trying to deliver the bags, and the guest had an itinerary on arrival which is so helpful for organizing things. I wish I had a picture of the finished product because they turned out pretty cute, but we were busy having fun.