How to Make Kentucky Wedding Welcome Gift Bags

Another wedding post for ya! Today I’m sharing how we made welcome bags for our out of town guests perfect for a Kentucky Wedding. We had a fair share of people come in for the wedding, some who had been to Kentucky before and some who had not. We wanted to put together a little something with our local favorites and a few personal items as a thank you for making the trip.

First off, nothing is more Kentucky than bourbon balls! We went with Woodford Reserve bourbon balls from Ruth Hunt Candies. Ruth Hunt actually partnered with Woodford Reserve 20 years ago to make the perfect bourbon ball and have been making these delicious treats ever since. Ale-8-One was another obvious choice, Kentucky’s infamous ginger soft drink that’s still made in small batches from scratch in Winchester. The mini bottles, besides being so dang cute, are the perfect individual serving size. We put in two per bag since there were two people in most rooms.

As a personal touch and to pay homage to my blog, we made “Biscuits & Blessings” (my blog tagline) cookbooks with some of my most popular recipes. We laid out the recipes on a template via Canva, which is a website where you can design things for free, and printed at Office Depot.

We also wanted to include a keepsake from the wedding, and these Kentucky-themed ornaments from Clay Chick Ceramics were perfect. They personalize items for free, so we had “Dave & Leela 2019” added to the back. I think it made a nice memento to remember the wedding without being too cheesy 😉 We also gave these as hostess gifts to friends who hosted showers for us and to my bridesmaids.

Last thing we added was a sheet with all the info about the wedding our guests would need and some local food, drink and entertainment recommendations. I also made these on Canva and printed at home on cardstock.

For the packaging we kept it super simple and affordable with brown kraft paper bags from Amazon and white tissue paper. Nothing fancy, but I’m not sure anyone cares about that. I loved how the bags turned out and hope our guests enjoyed them! If you’re interested in more wedding content, check out this post on my pre-wedding fitness and nutrition routine and this post on wedding planning. I’ll be sharing more soon as I get back photos, but let me know in the comments below if there’s anything you want to know about our Kentucky wedding!