While I was out bacheloretting, Benjamin had a few hours to kill before his own party. In addition to making a hell of a lot of rosemary simple syrup, he was in charge of dropping off the welcome bags for our out-of-town guests on his way into the city that evening.
To me, welcome bags feel like a relatively new phenomenon. When I?ve traveled for weddings, they?re a pleasant surprise, but I don?t think I?ve even noticed if a couple chose not to do them for whatever reason. Still, with our date being so close to the holidays and so many people traveling so far to be with us, we wanted to make people as happy and comfortable as possible, so I decided to take on the project.
I looked into boxes but couldn?t find a cost effective version I liked, so we went with classic white bags. I stamped a little Mae on each one and used the same gold ribbon as we used on our invitations on the sides of the handles.
Ribbon with twistable wire = pretty curls!
And the insides, you ask" After a fair amount of online research, we chose to include the following items, and went with Chicago or Midwest options whenever possible:

Mini bottles of water
The always-clever packets of Advil
A schedule of events, pulled from our website and printed on pretty card stock
Facial cleansing towelettes
One 16 oz. Sprecher soda (a Midwestern favorite—potential flavors included orange, strawberry, root beer and my absolute favorite, cream soda)
A Chicago postcard
Juicy Fruit or Doublemint gum, be...