Favours

I didn't want favours to be an area where we did something that was too modern but I didn't want to do something that wouldn't be recognised for it's meaning and age - like sugar cubes or almonds.

Not long after we started planning the wedding someone told me to watch Heston's Feasts as he was doing an episode on Medieval food. One of the themes that came out was "gastronomic trickery" and he used chocolate to replace other things - cutlery, plates, cups etc. As I'm not a molecular gastronomist I couldn't really replace everything on the table with chocolate versions, but an easy version of this is chocolate coins. I'll take them out of the nets they come in and split them between the favour bags.

My grandad used to work for Cadbury's as a draftsman (which is pretty much what Mark is the modern version of) so using Cadbury chocolate for favours would be a lovely little nod to his memory as he died shortly after we started our planning. I asked my other grandad to speak to his brother as he owns a shop and he got me all the coins I need and some spare.

Doing some reading into wedding customs I found that it's supposed to be good luck to get a piece of the wedding dress and that in medieval times a bride could be almost naked by the time she reached her bedroom from guests tearing up her dress for a piece! As time went on this was dealt with by hanging ribbons to her dress for them to pull off and by the groom throwing the garter, in the ensuing chaos of the guests trying to be the one to get hold of the garter, the couple would escape.

So I thought it would be nice to make the favour bags myself and I started looking at some trying to decide how to make them and sizes. Eventually I decided that better than using just a square favour bag, would be to make a pocket - a little dolly bag to keep money in (as a child I could never understand how Lucy Locket lost her pocket but of course it was talking about this, not a modern pocket that is part of a garment) - and I thought this would be a good way to combine the tradition of taking home a piece of the dress with favours. I am going to ask the dress designer very nicely if I can have a couple of meters of my dress fabric which I'll make into pockets (if anyone would be kind enough to help me out with sewing a few, I'd be very grateful to you).

These are my two ideas for patterns so far:

This one is two piece, with a round base. The top would have a channel for a drawstring. I'm starting to think that it needs to be wider than the circle to allow it to sag otherwise it will be a tube...

This one is three piece. The semi circles are there to give a channel for the drawstring.

I think I'm leaning towards the first one but really I need to have a practice make up to see what works. Sewing with circles is always a pain, so I think either is going to be fun! If you can sew and have any suggestions, I'm happy to hear them!