i’ve never cared much for wedding favors, because so often they are uninspired, impersonal, and headed straight for the garbage. the couple is giving you something you don’t need, won’t use, and can’t sell. my wife and i tried to approach elements of our wedding in a slightly different manner–and favors were among them. we knew exactly what we didn’t want to give to our friends.

my first few years in college i used to keep my self busy bending stolen dining hall forks into little creatures with my hands and a pair of pliers. i don’t think i recognized it (or even thought much about it) at the time, but now i think it was some kind of creative compulsion–some part of me refusing to be an philosophy/english major. i gave most of them away, although i still have a few floating around–a few that my wife seems to love. during one of many wedding planning discussions, she looks over at one of these little guys and says “why don’t you do something like that?”

explaining why we like deer is hard. explaining why we chose that creature to be a thematic element in our wedding, also hard. but we did. so deer figured into our slightly less traditional save-the-dates (email only) and invitations (puzzle pieces)…and so why not our favors. the fork deer are something we thought up, made with our own hands from essentially discarded materials (thrift store silverware), and symbolically significant to us.

now for the charming part.

during the last week and a half spent visiting family and friends (some of whom we haven’t seen since the wedding) these little fork deer were living on a mantle or shelf somewhere in each home. now that’s pretty fucking charming.