Party favour bags for a children’s birthday

Favour bags are a small job that goes wrong in predictable ways: the wrong number, the wrong size, and no way to tell whose is whose. All three are solved the day before, in about twenty minutes.

How many

Count the invited children and add three. The three cover a sibling who comes along, a friend who was invited late, and the one that gets dropped in something.

Small assorted packs usually come in eights, twelves, fifteens or twenty-fours, which maps onto party sizes reasonably well. Ordering one pack size up is cheaper than discovering you are one short.

What size

Small. Around 6 × 3 × 8 inches is the standard favour bag and it is the right answer for almost every party.

The instinct to go bigger is a trap. A large bag with four small items in the bottom looks meaner than a small bag that is full, and the contents rattle around. Fill matters more than volume.

Go up a size only if a specific item requires it — a boxed toy, a book, anything that will not lie flat in a small bag.

What goes in

Three or four things is plenty, and a mix of types works better than four of the same kind: something to eat, something to do, something to keep.

Two practical constraints worth respecting. Keep it to items that survive being carried home in a bag on a warm afternoon — chocolate does not. And check with parents about allergies before including food at all; the safest favour bags contain none.

Nothing that needs batteries you have not supplied, and nothing with small parts if any guest is under three.

Problem one: whose bag is whose

This is the failure that produces tears at the door. The fix is a tag with a name on it, tied to the handle, written before the party starts.

Tags tied on beat stickers stuck on: they do not fall off in a pile, they are readable from any angle, and the bag can be reused afterwards.

If bags are different colours, letting each child pick a colour at the start and writing it down works too — and doubles as an activity.

Problem two: the bags fall over

Small bags with light contents will not stand up on a table, and a favour table of slumped bags looks like a job half done.

Two fixes. Cut a piece of card to the base size and drop it in, which squares the bottom. Or add a sheet of tissue standing up above the rim, which stiffens the top edge and hides the contents at the same time.

Tissue also solves the third minor problem, which is children seeing what is in everyone else’s bag before they get one.

Filling them efficiently

Assembly line, not one bag at a time. Lay all the bags open in a row, then go along the row with each item in turn. Twelve bags take about five minutes this way and considerably longer the other way.

Do it the day before, not the morning of. Whatever else happens on the day, that is one job already finished.

Colours

Assorted multi-colour packs suit children’s parties better than a single colour, and they make the name-tag problem easier because a colour is a second identifier.

Iridescent and holographic bags are consistently popular with children and are, honestly, not recyclable. For one party a year that is a reasonable trade, and it is better said out loud than not.

Older children and adults

For teenagers and adults, one slightly better bag beats several small ones. A medium bag, plain kraft or a single colour, one good item and tissue over the top reads as a present rather than a party favour.

The same applies to wedding and shower favours, where restraint is generally the right call.

Afterwards

Favour bags are among the most reusable things in a house because they get carried once. A bag with a tied tag rather than a stuck label comes back in perfect condition, and a box of used favour bags in a cupboard is a party half prepared for.

What to order

Small assorted packs in party sizes are on the small gift bags page. The brighter finishes children ask for are under coloured and iridescent bags, sets arriving with tissue included are on the gift bags with tissue paper page, and if you are catering for a school event rather than a party, the hundred-packs on the bulk kraft bags page work out considerably cheaper per bag.