The Best of Everything: Out of Town Guest Boxes

I cannot think about our wedding without hearing this song in the back of my mind. There is no reason for this -- the song was never played during the wedding ceremony or reception. But, I vaguely remember putting it on the band's setlist for "last song of the night." They ended with "Shout" instead. Regardless, this will always be the song that triggers "OUR WEDDING DAY."

As we wait for our photographer to wrap up our professional pictures, I thought I'd begin our recaps with one of the big details about which I shared little-to-no finalized information with you previously: the Out of Town Guest Boxes (known in the wedding industry as the "OOT Guest Boxes")!

Here's a statistic that most of you probably do not know: 82% of the guests that came to our wedding came in from out of town (OOT). This meant that we knew from the very beginning of planning that we had to provide something at the hotel for these guests to be able to know where to go and when to be there. If it were up to my dad, this would mean an envelope at the front desk with a list of directions. But, I begged 12 months out to have free reign on the OOT goodies and was granted it -- and so the madness began!

Only a few weeks after Mr. Wahoo Wedding (whoa, he's not Mr. FWW anymore!) proposed, I stumbled across Mrs. Cloud's post on her OOT boxes on the popular wedding blog, Wedding Bee.

Inspiration was born.

OOT boxes became a necessity and before anyone could stop me, I'd ordered 100 white gable boxes from Papermart.com. Should you, too, decide to go this route let me make a few suggestions: (1) Read what you're ordering carefully -- I almost ordered 2 cases which would have been 200 boxes (way too many!). There are 100 boxes per case. (2) I ordered (as did Mrs. Cloud in this picture) boxes that were 8×4⅞×5¼. I was very optimistic about how many things these would hold -- they don't hold nearly as much "stuff" as pictured above (honestly, I don't know how Mrs. Cloud did it) which actually happened to be perfect for me. If you want to hold more "stuff" you may want to order 1 size up. (3) These little suckers are pretty difficult to transport -- they don't stack when full and they take up a lot of room to stuff. Make sure you have a plan before you order them -- we barely fit the 80 boxes we needed in the back of my mom's SUV to take them to the hotel.

Here's what we started with:

80-ish white gable boxes after we put them together. Do you see the labels on the front? No?

Here, let me give you a closer look:

They read "A Wahoo Wedding" in orange, followed by our names in navy, then "The fourth of December, Two thousand and ten." The silhouette is that of Thomas Jefferson -- I tried to carry Mr. Jefferson throughout these boxes as a tie in to our UVa theme (he founded the University).

We printed these labels ourselves and, though they did not come out quite as crisp and clear as I would have liked, they served their purpose and saved some money on printing. I used Avery labels purchased at Staples and downloaded the template to Microsoft word in order to format them.

Then came the goodies inside! Here's what we used:

x 2.

I wanted to use the little water bottles a la Mrs. Cloud because they were cute.

My father wanted to use the full size bottles because they were practical. Plus, 2 full size water bottles fit perfectly in the bottom of the gable boxes.

Mrs. Wahoo Wedding: 0; Dad: 1.

(Also, I really wanted to make personalized labels for the water bottles but I kinda-sorta-mighta run out of time...oh well, the best laid plans... Did anyone notice? Probably not!)

A map of Virginia, a Virginia Winery Tour map, and 2 Virginia is for Lovers bumper stickers.

Where did we get all of these things, you ask?

Well, that's easy -- from the lovely people at the Virginia Tourism website available here! Not only did we received enough maps and bumper stickers to give out to an army, we also received the 2010 Virginia Travel Guide, and the 2010 Virginia Guide to Golf Courses for everyone -- unfortunately, we couldn't fit them all in the boxes!

Now, I'm going to let you in on a little secret -- you can get all of these things for free!

FREE?

Yes, FREE! No shipping. No handling. Nada. You request what you need and the boxes appear on your front door step approximately 2 weeks later. This was one of the most pleasant discoveries I found during wedding planning.

(And yes, I know they're not actually "free." That's why I pay my taxes.)

Also, x 2.

I was so excited about using these peanuts for a few reasons: (1) They're little 1 ounce bags -- the perfect size for a salty snack; (2) They might have the best name for a wedding treat...ever. Hubbies =adorable; and (3) My mom's college roommate is the owner of the Virginia-based company, so it was great to know that not only were we supporting local, in-state business, but also that we had a personal connection! Big bonus!

(Side note: if you've never had Hubs peanuts, they are the best in the state - bar none. Go here to get some for yourself!)

We also threw in a handful of Hershey's kisses --

because who doesn't want to enjoy some kisses with their hubbies?

(When we were putting all of these boxes together I started to get a little delirious and found this sort of question EXTRA hilarious.)

Then the hard work started:

My father carefully typed out the directions to all the places our guests needed to go for the weekend.

And then he wanted to just stuff it in the box with everything else.

As you can imagine (since I'm crazy about details) that was not going to fly.

I had to make it pretty! I had to make it MEAN SOMETHING!

Thus, this little baby was born.

This project, though it took a long time (too long) to format, ended up being very helpful for our guests and something we received a lot of positive feedback about -- yay! If you were opening up our OOT box, this would be the first thing you would see.

Then, when you opened it, you would see the places you needed to be and some recommendations for dining options in the area.

But the back was my favorite part...

Places to see and THE MAP.

The map was a last minute addition (ie I made it the Wednesday before the wedding and we cut some information off of the welcome packet to fit it on the back). I had wanted a map for a long time: I'd investigated etsy, had contacted some local printers, etc. etc. and I'd learned one thing -- to get a personal map designed for your wedding was an extravagant and unnecessary additional cost. I was bummed (but quietly so -- if I had gone to my parents and said I wanted a personalized map on top of everything else, they might have changed the locks and moved to Florida.)

Finally, the Wednesday before the wedding my wedding-blog-browsing paid off, again on Wedding Bee.

Mrs. Ballet Flat had a full tutorial on how to make your own wedding map right in Powerpoint. Now, I don't own Photoshop and if I did, I'd probably be pretty lousy at it because I had reading instruction manuals (go figure), but I can handle me some powerpoint.

See? This was her finished map:

And, this was mine:

You can read about how to create your own, here!

Now, the map didn't end up being quite large enough for it to serve as a replacement for those great directions my dad took all that time typing out, so we were able to stuff his directions inside of these packets -- then they looked great AND served a purpose! Anytime a wedding-related thing acheived this duality, I'm pretty sure an angel in heaven got his wings.

But, we weren't done yet -- all of these boxes had to be closed up and "pretty-fied." This is where Mom came in:

She looks happy, but in her head she's trying to think of ways to kill me without landing herself in jail.

I would like to say that I dutifully spent the better part of 4 hours closing up boxes, tying ribbon to the top, and then carefully curling the ribbon with scissors so that it looked beautiful and festive...but I didn't. Mostly, I spent the time getting stuck on the floor between the twin beds, singing songs with nonsense words, complaining about how much my back hurt and what a terrible idea this all was and how if I could do it again I would elope (for real, when you get down to these sorts of details, all of a sudden it seems as though you're at the base of an insurmountable mountain,) and generally being obnoxious. Without my mother, I can honestly say that these boxes would have never gotten done. Ever. In a million years.

So, thanks Mom!

Want to see the finished product?

All dressed up and ready to go!!

(Picture quality may be grainy due to the fact that all pictures of the OOT boxes were taken using my Blackberry when I was stalling from putting the boxes together and tying the ribbons.)