Yes, I know I’ve been promising this post for a couple of months now, but better late than never, right? The welcome bags were a challenge! I hate to think about all the hours I spent stressing about what to put in them (especially when my husband was ‘tallying up the cost’!).

My biggest mistake! Insisting on doing too much myself! We wanted to have the bags delivered to our guests’ rooms while they were at the welcome party so they’d have that surprise waiting for them when they got back. Well my hair trial did not go well and our planning meeting before that took a lot longer than expected, so the bags didn’t get done during the day when I had planned. My guests were just arriving that afternoon, so I didn’t want to ask anyone for help after the long flight. I was counting on my husband to help but he got pulled in other directions by family. So, I was scrambling by myself, trying to put them together and we ended up showing up an hour late to our party!

The bags: I purchased the Ailana Kai Lauhala Totes. They were only 12″ x 10″ x 4″ so at first I was concerned that they’d be too small, however it helped me focus on putting a few nicer things in them instead of stressing over filling a larger bag.

• Straw visors for the ladies – men always seem to have hats, but ladies often forget. I spent a couple of months scavenging these off of eBay. I have 7 extras so if you’re interested in buying them from me, let me know. I’d probably sell them for $5-6 each…
• Full size Aruba Aloe Products – Aruba Aloe After Sun and Aloe Gel, one per single person or couple. The products are great but retail pricing is really expensive. If you’re interested in Aruba Aloe products, check out the grocery stores like Ling & Sons OR, do what we did and try to buy them form the wholesaler, Oduber Agency. (The “After Sun” that is around $15 in Aruba Aloe Retail Stores and Factory Store, was around $8.50 at “SuperFood”, around $7.00 at Ling & Sons and around $5.00 each at Oduber! I think we had to pay in cash and maybe purchase in multiples of 6 but it was well worth it! If you’re looking for convenience though, see if your wedding planner can pick these up for you or have them delivered to your hotel. I believe Ling & Sons will deliver.)
• Two bottles of water per person (lots of options at the local supermarket – inexpensive – I think less than $1 each)
• Lip balm with sunscreen (purchased from Drugstore.com – they had some great specials)
• Mackinac Island Fudge – a ‘treat from Michigan’ and a favorite of one of my husband’s sons – doesn’t melt so it was easy to pack
• Mamba Tropical Candies – a favorite of his other son
• Droste Dutch Patilles Chocolates – I chose the orange chocolates since orange was one of my wedding colors. (Also, I have grandparents that are from the Netherlands and Aruba is a Dutch island so they seemed like a great idea, though I ate too many of them!) Though I did bring these from home, I found them also in the Ling & Sons grocery store for slightly less than I paid at home!
• Chips – I put a few bags of salty snacks in each bag for late night munchies. I had purchased these in bulk from Costco but should have just bought them in Aruba
• Cookies – Our wedding planner got us some freshly baked dutch cookies – they were SO GOOD! I had brought cellophane treat bags with me and packaged them myself. I had even made sticker labels that coordinated with the rest of our wedding materials but ran out of time to put those on and tie the pink ribbons! We also had individual packages of Oreos and Fig Newtons that we forgot to put in the bags but we brought them on the sailing excursion and they were a huge hit!
• Custom Can Koozies – I put can koozies in the bags for everyone. Plain orange koozies for the guys and pretty fabric covered custom koozies by Etsy’s PinkGasoline for the ladies. (I have some extras that I may list for sale soon.)
• La Roche-Posay Thermal Spring Water – travel size misters for my bridesmaids (though Evian also has less expensive misters available)
• Chewing Gum
• Wedding CD! - this contained fun music we hoped would remind people of the trip — ‘party music’ instead of ‘wedding music’. We had some bollywood, bhangra, reggaetone, caribbean…
• Printed Materials: Welcome letter, sheet of common phrases in Papiamento, Itinerary and note about some of our treats – the whole packet was tied together with a ribbon.
• Postcards (almost): One other idea we had was to put postcards in each bag. We wanted to include a postcard or two guests could send home and also wanted to pre-address and stamp a postcard to ourselves, asking our guests to please jot down their favorite memory from the weekend drop it in the mail. We were going to create a scrapbook of these later. Well, in the shuffle I forgot those! I still have 30 blank 4×6 “Eagle Beach” postcards that I’ll be listing for sale…
• Maps (almost): We were going to put an island map in the bag, but again forgot

Some items we considered and decided against:

• Disposable cameras – these days everyone has a digital camera!
• Sunscreen – another bride warned me that everyone brings sunscreen – they know they are going somewhere warm. We did however, bring plenty of sunscreen to the sailing excursion