Monday, March 12, 2007

Polka-dotted Hospitality Bags

If you look closely at this picture, you can see me and two of the 'girlies' behind the mass of bags!

In preparation for a dear friend's daughter's wedding, a group of us got together yesterday to assemble 120 Hospitality Bags. These are to be delivered at the end of the week to all of the out of towner's coming in for the weekend wedding. Some will go to individual homes hosting some of the visitors and the remainder will be given out at the hotel.

We bagged malted milk balls into individual plastic bags that were then tied with brown ribbons. We also measured out snack mix into bags that were later also tied with ribbons along with a recipe card for the mix. The mother of the bride miraculously found the time to bake and wrap 120 individual delicious blueberry bread loaves and we ribboned these, added a plastic knife and the recipe card to each one.

The final step was to pack these goodies (as well as bagged chips and bottled waters) into individual white bags, stuffed with brown and white polka dot tissue and adorned with a label on the front with the name of the bride and groom.

We laughed ourselves silly as we tried to get the bows just right and the tissue fluffed correctly. I must tell you that by the time we got to the final step (hours later) we were quite giddy and began to rip into one of the leftover malted milk ball bags and hungrily devoured them! Prior to that we had begun snacking on some of the extra snack mix as well as some popcorn... so we were quite stuffed by the time we finished. (*groan*) Other than the large number of bags needed, this ritual is something that we have all been doing for each other for years. Putting together these welcome bags and hosting a Hospitality Room and lunch is our way of helping our the bride's parents during their big weekend.

I don't know if this is done all over or if this is just a "Southern tradition" but for us...

... it is truly a labor of love... : )

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