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Out of Town Goodies

Our vow renewal was essentially a destination event. Only two of our guests lived in Atlanta, so the remainder were situated in three hotels in Midtown/Downtown – the Four Seasons, the Marriott Midtown Suites, and the Ellis Hotel. To welcome our friends and family, we created out of town baskets full of bottled water, snacks, a DIY welcome/do not disturb sign (more on that later today!), and a folder containing all of the information that they would need for the three days of events.

oot baskets
{Image courtesy of Jenna}

The folder not only had some beautiful Gocco’d Laura Hooper calligraphy on it (love that Gocco hand stamp kit) but it also contained one of my absolute favorite things from the whole vow renewal – my custom created LH map of Atlanta.

custom map calligraphy laura hooper
{Image courtesy of Jenna}

Laura worked very closely with me during the design process to determine the icons we would use for the map – she even drew [intlink id=”1239″ type=”post”]Charlie[/intlink] for the dog park icon! We decided to print them in full color in 7×9 format.

atlanta map custom calligraphy
{Author’s personal collection / map ©Laura Hooper}

It so perfectly characterizes Atlanta and our event – we got so many compliments about how adorable they were!

The folder also contained a reprint of the area information booklet from our [intlink id=”1005″ type=”post”]RSVP packets[/intlink], each guest’s ticket to the welcome party, a Lightscribe printed CD and mailer for the guest to return their pictures to me, and a welcome letter.

out of town information folder

out of town information folder wedding

lightscribe printed cd
{Images courtesy of Jenna}

Just a note about the baskets themselves – we purchased all of the baskets from Ross, Home Goods, and Marshall’s. There was a big assortment of types, but most of them ranged from $3.99 to $7.99 and were decorative tin or cardboard baskets. Here is a picture of all of the baskets at my mother’s house to give you an idea of what we ended up with:

out of town baskets
{Author’s personal collection}

We purchased some gift basket filler from the local dollar store, and some shrink wrap from Lowes to package the baskets and keep them safe in transit. The hotels then cut off the shrink wrap before delivering to the rooms.

What did you include in your OOT baskets? Did you search high and low like I did for the perfect containers?

E.