Thoughts on Holy Cards as favors

bear1229

My FI and I are looking at giving a way Holy Cards, either a Holy Family card or our patron saint cards, that would be blessed at the wedding. We like the option because of the low cost and how personalized it could be from one of the many printers. They would be in a basket near the door of the reception hall for guests to pick up as they leave.

Has anyone seen this before? Thoughts as to how to present it to guests, we won't be doing a receiving line.

monkeysip

We did holy cards.  

Few thoughts:

1.  How many guests are Catholic or religious?  We didn't have that many people take a card, but maybe it was because most of them weren't Catholic.

2.  We fanned them out on the card/gift table at our reception.  There wasn't a good visible place at the ceremony.  One option would be to put one at each place setting, but we decided against that.  You might have more people take one if you did that though.

3.  I really wouldn't consider them favors.  But, you don't NEED favors.  We didn't do favors.  No one really misses them. I don't really consider the prayer cards a replacement for favors though.

Overall, I was glad we ordered them.  They meant a lot TO US, and some people enjoyed them.  But I wouldn't get your feelings hurt if a lot of guests don't take one or don't care.  I would only order them if YOU really want them, you know?

bear1229

Thanks, I can see that. We both come from very non-Catholic families, so it is probably a no go. We may just order them for ourselves and those that we know would want them.

agapecarrie

I suggest making it known that they are blessed though. Blessed items can't be put in the trash. 

bear1229

I would hope that the priest blessing the cards in front of them would be an indication, but I will ask that our priest instructs the guests on proper treatment of blessed objects. He tends to be awesome about that with non-catholics.

meltoine

I would not do this. Though both sides of our family are Catholic, very few of them are actually religious and I don't trust them to know what to do with a blessed object. It sounds condescending, but I wouldn't want to create an occasion of sin for my guests and I don't think many would have been interested since they were not religious. However, most of the members of our wedding party were religious, so I might have included it with their gifts.

lalaith50

I went to a wedding where they had holy cards at each place setting, I thought it was very nice.

I think it's a good idea, but perhaps you should just do holy cards and not have them be formally blessed, to avoid the complications that come with that. (It seems odd to me that a holy card *would* be blessed... since it's a paper thing, it strikes me as very disposable and not something like a crucifix or statue that you're never going to just accidentally throw away.)