Wedding

Cute & Elegant Gifts to Include In Your Personalized Bridesmaid Proposal Boxes

August 11, 2020laurenslighthouse

Last updated on October 25th, 2022

After your boo proposes to you and you live it up on Cloud 9 with a gorgeous ring on your finger during the weeks following your engagement, you start to wrap your head around how YOU will be popping your own big question! You’ve probably already figured out how large your bridal party will be, who will be your maid/matron of honour and who will be your bridesmaids, but you haven’t figured out how to ask them yet. Now, bridesmaid proposals are in no way necessary. They are simply a fun and fancy way to get your best girls excited for your big day, and honestly an excuse to spoil them, as we all know: the bridesmaids do most of the heavy lifting for the wedding.

One of the greatest excitements that I had about wedding planning BEFORE Jason even proposed to me (watch our proposal video here!), was asking my girls to be my bridesmaids. They’ve been through thick an thin with me and have been our #1 supporters since the start of our relationship. So yeah, I definitely wanted to cherish and praise them as well as I could before I put them to the grind!

I wanted to make their boxes as personalized as I could whilst still maintaining a cohesive theme between all of them. So I decided to enunciate their gifts by adding their names/initials on some of the items and Weddingstar came extremely handy for this! But before I get into the gifts, I’ll start with the boxes.

Finding the Perfect Gift Box for Your Bridesmaids

For the boxes, I might have gone a little overboard. I wanted a classy keepsake that was high quality that the girls couldn’t help but use forever. And not willing to pay shipping costs or spending hours rummaging through different stores without a guarantee of finding anything, I decided to rely on Amazon. I ended up finding these beautiful Hallmark boxes with a satin finish, an attached ribbon to close the lid and that each included packaged shredded paper that matched the box colour. But they were a whopping $17 each!

If you’re within a budget, you can definitely find BEAUTIFUL boxes for much more affordable at Michael’s, HomeSense or stock up on a bunch of gift boxes at ULINE. I actually spotted some beautiful, sturdy magnetic boxes at HomeSense of decent size at HomeSense for $10 or less. The only question you have to ask yourself is how much you care about being able to personalize them. Some of them might not be accommodating for adding decals or hand lettering on their surface.

I wanted to add a personal touch to each box by having the girls’ names hand-lettered on each of their respective boxes. An option you can evaluate is having a calligrapher actually write them on professionally. I was uncertain of whether the box finish would be able to hold the markings and heat embossing can be costly. So I ordered decals off HunterKouture on Etsy and they turned out beautifully! The font matched what I had in mind and the rose gold was a gorgeous colour that suited my gifts (keep reading!).

A couple lessons learned:

– Making sure the box is of adequate size is a must before you start picking all your gifts. I made the mistake of ordering the boxes and buying all the gifts at the same time, to realize that the boxes I ordered were a tad too small for what I pictured. Thankfully they had enough depth to fit everything and give the gift package a full appearance, but if I were to do it again, I’d order a much wider box with shorter depth. It all depends on what your vision is and what your final gifts will be.

– After spending the time and money separately ordering the boxes and decals, I’d definitely just order completely personalized boxes if I were to have a do-over. Etsy is a great place to start looking. There are many shops there that I bet will fit what you envisioned in terms of colour, size, hand lettering font and colour, and any optional message you wanted to include in the box. The only thing that could be a deal breaker for you is the cost of shipping. So Weddingstar might be a great place to look to next. You’ll receive free shipping after spending $99 CAD, for which you can get some of your personalized gifts – check out the wine tumbler and passport holder I picked below!

Designing the Perfect Card for Your Bridal Party Proposal

If you decide to include a card in your proposal box, it’s up to your creative freedom as to how you want to present it. Some bride-to-be’s will write a heartfelt message in their card, others will get down to the nitty-gritty of what it means to be a member of the bridal party. I wanted the card to be where I pop the question to the girls! You can purchase some really elegant “Will You Be my Bridesmaid/Maid of Honour?” cards or have them custom made and printed, but I decided to put my Pinterest design skills to the test and use Canva to create my own cards and print them at home.

Canva has a number of free templates you can use for bridesmaid proposal cards. You can design them from scratch with countless free fonts and backgrounds to choose from. I wanted to incorporate a cute picture of each of my girls with me in the cover of the card which can be easily done by uploading an image into your Canva repertoire, setting its position to the back of your design and adjusting the image edit settings as needed. I set my photos to low transparency to emphasize the big question, but again, this is completely up to your own creative freedom.

I had a bunch of plain cards and envelopes handy that I got from Michael’s which allowed me to print my designs at home at no cost.

If you would like to handwrite your own personal message to each bridesmaid in here, go right ahead! I decided to touch a bit on what their role would be and I used Canva to design this as well! Again, your card should be whatever your heart desires.

The Gifts

Choosing Your Personalized Bridesmaid Gifts

It all comes down to what items speak to you most and what you think your girlfriends will cherish the most. But definitely aim for functionality: people always love receiving gifts they can use. When customizing your gifts for your bridesmaid proposal, it might be best to personalize them without having “Bridesmaid” or “Maid of Honour” branded all over the item, as they will only be in your bridal party once. Once that time passes, they’re still going to want to use that item, and people generally love possessing functional products that have their name or initials on them.

My gals love to A) drink wine and be classy and B) travel, as do I! So when I found these awesome gift ideas on Weddingstar, I couldn’t resist. Seriously, don’t hesitate to see what they have on your site! You might just find exactly what you’re looking for. I found items way better than I imagined.

Selecting Non-Personalized Bridesmaid Gifts

I wanted to include other items that weren’t necessarily personalized but perfect for my bridal gals. These were all items that I knew they’d love that had a bit of a celebratory and self-care element to them. I also wanted to stick with the pink & rose gold theme that I had for the boxes.

The first item that I knew was a must was a mini bottle of wine and I found the perfect one at Co-op! It’s a Bottega Rose Gold, an award-winning Pinot Noir Prosecco, but I really just bought it for its sparkling rose gold exterior. You can definitely be more creative with wine bottles and go for one that you can peel off the sticker and replace it with your own, making them more personal and memorable.

The second item that I bought in a batch was the Bride Tribe compact mirror. I found these on Amazon and they came in a pack with a “Bride to be” mirror as well. I thought these were a great choice having two maids of honour, but another great option is the pack that come with a “Maid of Honour”, “Matron of Honour” and the “Bridesmaid” mirrors. So many to choose from! If you want to personalize them, Etsy have many stores that can either emboss them with initials or names with a number of beautiful designs. But since I wanted to mix the gifts with some personalized and some not, Amazon made my life easy.

One of my favourite gifts that I just had to include was the Skwiik Cloud bath bomb set. I couldn’t do a gift box without including one of my best-loved local self-care brands. The Cloud bath bomb set comes in fives so it was enough for the girls. But if I had a little more time, Skwiik actually offers party favours for occasions like this and I could’ve designed something really cute (like a macaron or ring-shaped bath bomb!) that would’ve made the box extra special. Definitely something to think about for your proposal box and how you can make it the ultimate gift package!

Finally, since my ladies and I love both chocolate and tea, I decided to stuff the wine tumblers with some of those as well, and the girls seemed the love the smell the treats gave off. I had these white mesh pouches handy so I put a few favourite tea bags in them and threw in some Lindt chocolate in the tumbler as well. You never know when the little things you keep around the house will turn out to be useful!

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Now that my maids of honour and bridesmaids have received my proposal and said “YES!”, I can’t wait till we get closer to the wedding so I can give them my final bridal gifts to them, ones that I’ve been waiting for years to give them! Stay tuned to see what I’ve got planned and our fun week-long bachelorette trip overseas!