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Favor Ideas for a Geeky Wedding?

Posted by Cliff on from the something-to-pass-out-to-the-guests dept.

Rachel Grey asks: "I'm getting married in September to a fellow geek (in the MIT chapel, no less), and we're trying to find geeky wedding favors to give at the reception. Ideally these would cost $4 or less and would provide some instant fun for the guests, so that it doesn't matter if they actually take them home. Some good ideas we've had so far are tangrams (available in bulk for a little under $1/set) and micro Hoberman spheres ($4 apiece). Any more ideas?"

12 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. How about mini Rubik's cubes... by kommakazi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Mini 2x2x2 versions are $5 or mini original 3x3x3 keychain versions are also $5...little more than you said it should cost but they would be entertaining for sure.

  2. Piles of lego type building blocks by friedegg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just buy a bunch of lego type building blocks in bulk (real ones will cost more), and dump piles on each table. People can build things, and trade pieces, etc. Lots of fun.

    --
    Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
  3. Silly Putty by McDulay · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How about different colors of silly putty? You can buy bulk quantities of putty from Crazy Aaron's Puttyworld, http://www.puttyworld.com/index.html. You could then give everyone a portion, and they could play with color mixing and other fun uses for putty.

  4. the wedding pics by zogger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    --burn the wedding pics and small vid clips right there at the wedding / reception and give out copies on cds. You can get the blank labels printed up now in advance so they are semi pro looking.

    1. Re:the wedding pics by Van+Halen · · Score: 2, Interesting
      That's a pretty cool idea. The only real problem is getting someone to assemble the pictures, encode any video clips, and burn the CDs while people are still there. If you just dumped the files onto the CDs with no navigation help, the non-geek guests may not know what to do with them. It would certainly help if there's a delay between the ceremony and reception. Otherwise, you need someone who isn't going to mind not being a part of the festivities while attending to this. And if the wedding is fairly large, burn time could become a factor.

      We thought about this for our wedding, but ultimately decided it was too much hassle. Besides, the Mac was busy playing our hand-picked playlist of ceremony and reception music. ;-) Our favors were just nice little bags of blue and white M&Ms (our wedding colors) that everyone enjoyed. Some of the other suggestions here might have been pretty cool, but that's ok.

      Instead, we made up CDs and sent them out with the thankyou notes. That gave us time to put some polish on the CD, making them friendly to our non-geek guests too. Because music is my hobby, I wrote and recorded 5 songs that were used in the ceremony. So we actually made enhanced audio CDs, containing those 5 songs plus a data track with all of the pictures, MP3s of the reception playlist, and a 5-minute video sample from the DVD (still working on completing that). For navigation, we used a mini version of our website pointing to all the files on the CD. The CD was then setup to auto-start the web browser in either Mac or Windows, and we even included QuickTime installers for anyone who might not have it.

      We've gotten a lot of compliments, especially from the non-geek guests, so I'm glad we didn't rush something less polished to hand out at the reception.

      --

      Say hello to zMac.

  5. Rock! by Capt.+Mubbers · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When my friends go married a couple of years ago they had sticks of rock with their names written in it, just like "Blackpool Rock".

    --
    "Watch the skies, keep watching the skies"
  6. Bookmarks. by FroMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My wife and I did bookmarks. Sure, its not terribley geeky, but perhaps you could do something in theme. We had a couple bible verses. You could try doing something similar, but use something like the GPL on it or something. :-)

    Another idea is to use a love letter or something you sent him/her on the book mark. In retrospect I could have used the first email I asked my wife out on a date with. It went something like this:

    int ask_for_date(char *me, char *you) {
    if (boyfriend(you) == true)
    return APOLOGY;

    if (!free_friday(you)) {
    rain_check(me, you);
    } else {
    return wanna_head_out(me, you);
    }
    }

    But if you have anything similar to that, like a love letter or something that you both share and put it onto/into a bookmark I think its pretty cool.

    (btw, that all compiled down into the wrong byte code when it ran, she did have a boyfriend, but I still got a rain check. :-)

    --
    Norris/Palin 2012
    Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
    1. Re:Bookmarks. by booch · · Score: 2, Interesting

      At my brother's wedding, they gave out heart-shaped cookie cutters with a recipe attached. Something like "love cookies", probably some poem too. I still have the cookie cutter, and use it whenever I'm trying to woo a woman. Anyway, the recipe is cool, because geeks like to make things and experiment. And the cookie cutter is useful, keepable, and brings back memories when they use it.

      --
      Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
  7. Actually, Slinkies are looking good by badlemming · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Thanks for the comments so far. :) I'll definitely be looking into silly putty, nose flutes, and the little Kinder toys in the chocolate eggs. Lights are a nice idea but won't be very fun because the whole thing is going to be in daylight... I shoulda said that. And things that are too puzzley, like the Rubic's cubes, might just scare off the nongeek family members. Darn nongeeks.

    Anyway, sometime yesterday we also got the idea of slinkies. They provide a nice range of nerdiness depending on the user... to some they're just something fun to flip from hand to hand, but you can get as deep into the physics of the things as you want. And if people get sozzled enough they can run slinky races down the stairs at the hotel.

  8. Don't buy anything: Make a donation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Do what my wife and I did: don't buy silly trinkets. Instead, we placed cards on each table stating that we'd spent the equivalent amount of money ($1000) on donations to two charities (The Canadian Cancer Society and the Huntington Society of Canada).

    You could do the geeky thing and make a donation to the EFF or something.

  9. chocolate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My husband and I gave out slightly geeky favors when we got married 13 years ago. A candy-making store searched their catalogs and found a floppy disk mold (5.25 inch, and thicker than the real thing) for us. We ordered floppy disks in dark chocolate with crispies, peanuts, and plain. The candy store shrink-wrapped each one. We created labels for 5.25" floppies on a dot matrix printer - with puns about combining our last names, and cute and humorous filenames on the 'disk'. The candy store attached the labels for us, and delivered the 'favor disks' to the reception place, which put them in the fridge for us.

    We handed these out 1.5 hours into the reception, and geek and non-geek friends made lots of puns about them, and had fun with the idea.

    We made enough extra to bring to workplaces for people whom we hadn't invited to the wedding.

  10. Not Really a Party Favor But..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    A wedding I went to a number of years ago had crossword puzzles printed on the tablecloth, and these were 'adult' clues.


    Judging by all the laughter and other comments everyone had a good time and at the end of the evening a substantial number of tableclothes were missing.


    Best of luck getting spliced.


    Ed Almos