Shortly after getting engaged, one of the most fun things you'll get to do is ask your crew to be a part of your big day! I would personally do this as soon after getting engaged as possible (if you know your wedding date) to give your people time to plan, budget, and save.
You'll also want to lay out financial expectations to be a part of the wedding day since there are usually events leading up to the main event. I have been in four weddings so far, and I ended up spending quite a bit of money to be in every one. I'd do it all over again though because all four of those friendships are still near and dear to my heart in some way! Telling people now what you expect of them will both give people time to prepare and will avoid an awkward, uncomfortable conversation later down the line. If someone declines, I wouldn't necessarily take it personally. People don't always advertise their hardships to the world, or even to their close friends, so keep that in mind. I would also not let this deter you from asking whom you want to! Even if someone has to politely decline, you could still make their day by including them in your proposals. I would just leave an open door that there will be no hard feelings if they say no.
If you can afford to cover all of the costs for your squad, that's awesome! Most brides and grooms aren't in that position, however. Typical costs associated with being in someone's wedding might include: hair and make up, dress/suit, shoes, bachelorette/bachelor parties, a wedding gift for the couple, and, in our case, travel expenses to the wedding itself.
So, how do you choose who to ask? We asked people that were important to both of us, people who have supported our relationship and our frequent moves together, people who have been in our lives for a very long time and who always seem to be there when we’re not only at our best, but at our lowest as well.
If you know you're going to ask people to be a part of your wedding, and you know they'll be spending some of their hard-earned money to support you, one way to show your gratitude and appreciation for your friends/family is by giving them a thoughtful gift! It can be as small or big as you want it to be. It can be personal, or it can be more generic. There are no rules here except to have fun with it! I went a little overboard with my gifts, but I had so much fun letting all of my girls know how much their friendship has meant to me over the years! I will link everything I bought and describe how I put my gifts together below! I am having a maid of honor and two co-matrons of honor (what has come to be known as my "honor roll"), a junior bridesmaid, a flower girl, and six bridesmaids. My fiancé has 9 groomsmen and a friend who is officiating our wedding whom we're also considering a groomsman.
For my honor roll, I added a little something extra in each gift, so I will talk about that as well.
I also helped my fiancé pick out the gifts he "proposed" to his groomsmen with, and I will share links for those, too!
This is a great time to have your wedding theme picked out and to at least know what you’re going to ask your bridesmaids to wear.
We are doing a greenery wedding with these colors — ivory, champagne, gold, sage, and eucalyptus. I imagine our wedding will have a lot of white roses and eucalyptus with gold and ivory accents.
For bridesmaid dresses, I am choosing to use Azazie. They have a great try on program, and they use Happy Returns, so it’s incredibly easy to send orders back or make exchanges. Their dresses are also affordable. I’m actually an Azazie ambassador. Hi! Here’s my code —
To go with the theme of my wedding, I chose eucalyptus, floor-length dresses in the stretch satin fabric. I am letting my girls choose which style they want to order since all bodies are different, and I want everyone to be as comfortable as possible. For my junior bridesmaid — they don’t make dresses in the stretch satin fabric, so she’ll just be choosing one in the chiffon fabric.
Why did I choose stretch satin fabric, you ask? I wanted the sheen of a satin dress but with the fit and comfortability of a chiffon dress. I test ordered a dress in the stretch satin fabric before officially deciding that’s what I would go with. It fit me like a normal dress would but with the exact sheen I was looking for. Satin can cling to your body, which isn’t always flattering or comfortable.
Brides! You can order 3 free color swatches from Azazie, and you can also set up a showroom with your important date noted and add dresses in the colors, fabrics, and styles that you like so that your bridesmaids have an idea of what you are looking for. You can even assign dresses to certain bridesmaids on here once your squad joins your showroom.
My best friend Alicia, who is one of my matrons of honor, is incredibly savvy when it comes to design, marketing, you name it. I'd sent her some ideas, and she made bridesmaid proposal cards for me that outlined the date of our wedding, the location, the dress, the color shoes, my bridal party, our hashtag - basically every detail you could think of. Shout out to Alicia for the help with these! She got them printed to an office depot near me, and I cut them, hole punched them, and tied them to the gift bags I put together with ribbon. These are such a great idea because your girls will have all the info they need in one place and shouldn’t need to reach out to you with too many questions. Alicia even made me a keepsake one with these details: THE DRESS / Color: White / Length: Floor / Style: Stunning. This was such a thoughtful touch I wasn’t expecting. I hope you have people in your corner as wonderful as all of my girls.
I also recommend giving your wedding party a deadline of when to order their dresses/suits. My wedding is in March of 2024, so I requested bridesmaids have their dresses ordered no later 12 weeks out from our wedding date so December 30, 2023. Azazie doesn’t take too long to ship, so this should be a great amount of time to allow for the dresses to come in, as well as allowing for any alterations that may be needed. My fiancé and I will be going to Men’s Warehouse next month to choose the look we’ll want out groomsmen to wear. Once we have those details finalized, we’ll be giving them a deadline as well.
BRIDESMAID PROPOSALS
They have several pre-made gift boxes that you can order on Etsy or Amazon. I needed to buy 11 gifts though and thought it would be more cost effective if I put the gifts together myself. I think I ended up spending more money than I would have if I’d pre-ordered them, but DIY’ing them allowed me to be more thoughtful, so I am not upset! First things first! I’d already picked our wedding theme, so I wanted my gifts to match that or at least be somewhat in line with the theme.
I started by buying proposal cards from an Etsy shop. I knew I wanted the insides to be blank, and I ended up writing each girl a letter about what our relationship meant to me and why I wanted them to be a part of my wedding day. This took the most amount of time. I drafted the letters in the Notes app on my iPhone before putting pen to the card stock - highly recommend this because it will decrease your chances of messing up. I also recommend triple checking to make sure you’re writing in the right card — I definitely had to toss one and order an additional one, whoops! Hey, I am human, too! I purchased these with the titles I needed and sage-colored ribbon.
The next thing I decided I wanted to include was a candle, so I ordered these 10 oz eucalyptus leaf candles (sage | musk scent) from Target at $4 a pop.
I moved on to wanting another personal touch and decided on mini frames where I could get pictures printed myself to add to them. I wanted to add one of my favorite photos of my girl and me or one of us at their own wedding. I ordered these frames from Michael’s for $4 each.
For the photos to include, I picked which ones I wanted to use and had CVS Photo print a 6” x 4” wallet set for each picture I’d chosen. 4 of the same photo come in a wallet set, but I just cut them and put one of each in a frame. I saved the extras and might look for a fun frame for myself to put them in later down the line.
Next up! I knew I wanted to include one “bigger” item in each gift. Everyone is having to travel for my wedding, so I landed on make up bags that I purchased off of Amazon. I think the price on these has gone up since I bought them, but my girls love them! The bags open wide with plenty of useful compartments. I ordered the light green color to match my wedding theme, and I even got myself one!
I did recruit one of my matrons of honor to help me with my gifts - I more wanted validation what I was going with was cute or a good idea. I just included an extra item in her gift since she wouldn’t have the element of surprise all of the other girls would get. I eventually realized I didn’t have anything personalized with their names in my gifts, so she ordered these super cute keychains for me off of Etsy! We did Font 6 in pistachio green, which actually compliments the make up bags so nicely!
She even ordered me a cute, cute Bride keychain from ASparklyChicBoutique on Etsy, but it doesn’t look like the Bride keychains are currently available. I’ve included a link to her Etsy shop below in case you want to check out any other items she might offer.
Here’s where I think I started to go overboard. I also ordered everyone teal green scrunchies that came on a card that said, “I can’t tie the knot without you.” This Etsy seller also sent me a white one and sent a thoughtful handwritten card with my order congratulating me! This shop looks like it’s taking a short break, but keep an eye out for her operation to be back up and running because this seller is SO SWEET! You can request an e-mail to let you know when TheStudioJoy is back up and running through the link below.
My rehearsal dinner is going to be at a winery, so I ordered 5 sets of two of these incredibly cute wine pins. I put these on the outsides of the gift bags. I didn’t include any pins on the gift bag for my junior bridesmaid since she isn’t old enough to drink alcohol.
Once I had everything in, I had to decide how in the heck I was going to package the gifts. I had too much stuff to fit into any type of cute box, so I ended up ordering personalized gift bags off of Etsy. For the lettering color, I chose Olive, and I got white (large) bags. I was able to put the date I needed them by in the comments. I’d forgotten I needed one a week earlier than I needed the rest, so I direct messaged the seller, and she was able to work with me to make sure I got them all in time for my trip, so I highly recommend working with this Etsy shop.
The last steps of putting my gifts together included packaging. From Amazon, I ordered a trio of chiffon silk ribbon in cream & green, some gorgeous eucalyptus greenery tissue paper (100 sheets), and 2 lbs of crinkle cut paper shred filler. I’d ordered 400 pieces of artificial eucalyptus leaves a while ago thinking they would come in handy at some point. I filled the bottoms of the bags with the crinkle cut paper and then added some of the leaves on top of that before placing all of the gifts in the bags and then adding the tissue paper at the top. I tied the strings of the gift bags together with the dark green ribbon. I added the wine pins to one of the corners of the bags, and I tied the proposal cards to the left string with the light green ribbon. Voilà! I was finally finished.
HONOR ROLL GIFTS
Remember — I included a little extra something, something for my honor roll.
My sister (and Maid of Honor) loves sunflowers. She also adds a lot of light and brightness to my life. For her, I added a set of sunflower pens that I tied together with ribbon. I didn’t realize just how many pens came in this set at first (12), so I hope she shared with her friends!
One of my matrons of honor loves to make iced coffee at home. I got her a clear glass coffee mug personalized with her first name on it. Since she was the one who lost the surprise element for her gift, I also gave her a cookbook. The Cajun Ninja is very popular in South Louisiana for his delicious Cajun recipes, and I know she’s already made a recipe or two from the cookbook!
My other matron of honor is studying to be a librarian and currently works at a library. For her, I added these ADORABLE book earrings.
For my godchild (and junior bridesmaid), I gifted her the same thing as all the other girls. However, she’s only 11 right now, so I wanted to give her something fun and more geared towards her current interests. I added a theater notebook from Etsy with her name on it and a teen makeup kit from Target.
FLOWER GIRL PROPOSAL
For our flower girl, we ordered her a flower girl proposal card (again with a blank inside) and a bunny with flower girl embroidered on one ear and her name embroidered on the other ear. The ears also have the cutest floral print. Unfortunately, the Etsy shop I ordered the bunny from no longer seems to be operating. I’ve linked the proposal card though!
GROOMSMAN PROPOSALS
For Christmas a few years ago, I wanted to buy my fiancé something really nice. I’d heard him talk about Pappy Van Winkle relatively often, but I knew I couldn’t afford to get him any whiskey. I started searching and realized I could get him cigars for much cheaper. I ordered him a box of these, and he loved them so much he incorporated them into his groomsmen proposal gifts.
He gave each groomsman a personalized beer glass, a leather koozie with their last name on it, and a cigar. If he knew one of his groomsmen didn’t smoke, he got them a bottle of alcohol to go with their gift instead. We have one that doesn’t smoke or drink, so Alex got him a leather toiletry bag with his initials on it.
For the toiletry bag, we ordered the light brown - large bag + personalization (add initials).
For the koozies, we ordered the light brown + personalization (last names). Alex got himself one of these as well.
For the beer glasses, we ordered design GM8 + personalization (first name - title - wedding date).
Happy shopping! I hope your proposals go off without a hitch and that this post gave you some cute and fun ideas or at least some inspo! :)
P.S. - Some of the photos in this post were taken by Natalie Phillips Photography at our engagement party back in April. Check out her work!