Cape Cod Out of Town Welcome Baskets

Michellerlg

Looking for some great Cape Cod inspired items to place in welcome baskets (or perhaps even favors).  Many of the guests attending our wedding will be from out of town (and their first time to the Cape) so we are hoping to give them some items that are Cape-made or Cape-themed.  Any thoughts?  Thanks!

lanneyj

For our welcome "baskets" we got beach buckets and filled them with bottled water (labeled with our names/wedding date), cape cod chips, small bag of craisins, map of the area, taffy and then some non-cape things...tylenol, animal crackers, granola bars and mints.

ND2011

Christmas Tree shops is AWESOME for this kind of stuff.  Cape Cod Potato Chips allows you to buy cases directly from them at a huge discount.  Also get some Cape Cod Beer - the owners are super nice.

WalknByTheH2O

Chocolate-covered cranberries - so yummy!

Also, a guide of the town you're getting married in is helpful - they usually have them for free at the Chamber of Commerce.

Homeschoolmom5

We were able to find nice, inexpensive canvas bags at Christmas Tree Shops that we filled.  Many of our guests used them the day of the wedding at the beach, and are still using them to this day!  Christmas Tree also had sand dollars that were not real (less fragile) but looked great  - we wrote the guest's names on one side and a welcome message on the other in blue and tied them to the bag's handles with nice striped ribbon.  This is what we put inside:

Large bag of Cape Cod Chips - it was cheaper to get the large bag on sale w/coupons at the supermarket than to pick them up from the company.
Bog Frogs & Chocolate Covered Cranberries - Picked these up from the manufacturer near Falmouth.
Two lobster lollipops tied w/ribbon (again, from Christmas Tree Shops, quite inexpensive).
We designed our own mugs at DiscountMugs.com and filled them with a packet of freshly roasted coffee from Cape Cod Coffee Roasters in Mashpee; tied it up with a pretty ribbon.

We were able to get nice guides from the Chamber in Falmouth, along with a few postcards for fun.  Also, the Flying Bridge had some cool newspapers that they gave to us after asking to put in the bags as we were having our rehearsal dinner there - they were very interesting!
We went to Late July cookie company in Barnstable and purchased cases of their small packets of cookies and crackers - super nice company and very helpful!
Our local Stop & Shop had 1 liter bottles of Cape Cod cranberry soda that were tasty, so those went in.  We also threw in two bottles of water.
We purchased cute little flip flop keychains from Oriental Trading for pennies!
We found nice little inexpensive ocean-themed tins online that we filled with individually packaged life savers candy from Costco.
Again, just for fun, we found "Cape Cod Air" bottles at Christmas Tree Shops, wrapped them in blue tissue to protect them and tied them up with twine for a real nautical look.
Lastly, we made a "Summer Songs" CD for our guests to listen to as they were travelling around on the Cape to get them in the mood.  We had fun labels printed online, a beach picture of the bride & groom with little sailboats around it, and after putting them in a clear case, we made nautical knots out of twine and tied them up - they came out very cute!

Hope this helps, we had a lot of fun putting this together!!!

Homeschoolmom5

Oh, and forgot to add, we also bought boxes of taffy at Christmas Tree Shops and put a few of them in small, clear beach ball bags from Oriental Trading.  We printed labels, punching them with a small whale punch and tied them on with a ribbon, saying what they were.  Inexpensive and easy to do.   I think that was it!

Karen's MOH

Wow-- these make my bags look so lame. We just bought Cape Cod potato chips (cheaper from Costco than the manufacturer for me), and a welcome to Cape Cod postcard. Otherwise it was mostly generic snacky things.

seascape momma

Hi, In addition to many of the thing already mentioned, my daughter, added individual bottles of cranberry juice, snack size goldfish, swedish fish.

She also added gum and some tylenol and advil, which many guests remarked that they were grateful for. HTH

midgemoto

lobster pops are silly and fun too.

MissCynic

Cape Cod cranberry soda ( made my Polar)

suzfoldsfive

Thank you! That is all so helpful!

Reykjavik9

There are a lot of great ideas here!
As a native Cape Codder I recommend also supporting local businesses. I'm getting my welcome buckets from Cape-Abilities (a wonderful non-profit), and I'm going to supplement them with products from Cape Cod businesses. I love the Christmas Tree Shop, but you should take a close look at what you're buying (most of the stuff is Made in China). If you're looking for local taffy, try Kenny's Salt Water Taffy in Onset (just over the canal).

Starfish0512

I am also a local and agree with the above bride... xmas tree shops may be cheap but common phrase goes, you get what you pay for...  What about making starfish ornaments or a hand painted map of CC with your names and wedding date? 

[Deleted User]

We found cute beachy bags at Christmas Tree Shop on sale at the end of summer for $.49 per bag (can't beat that!) and included:

2 bottles of water
2 bags of cape cod chips
advil
shout wipes
travel toothpaste
salt water taffy
the cape cod guidebook
yarmouth guidebook
tourist map of the area
gum
nail file
Welcome letter with information about some of our favorite things to do/places to eat in the area

I think that was everything - we tried to include mostly things the guests might forget (or unexpectedly need) with some nice late night snacks.  We included the guidebooks and maps because most guests were staying much longer than 1 or 2 days and wanted to help them see the sights.

Michellerlg

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!
I really appreciate everyone taking time to post suggestions.  Hopefully this can help other brides to be too.

Cheers!

MissCynic

For my daughter's wedding, I made word search puzzles and included them in the bags.  Everyone loved them.  All the words were about the couple or the beach theme wedding.  Plenty of free online tools.