Best Charity Favours and Gift Lists

If you’re looking for an alternative to a traditional wedding registry, charity wedding favours are a great way to highlight something close to your heart and do something worthwhile for a good cause.

We love the idea of donating yourself via your wedding favours, on your guest’s behalf.  A lot of charities offer this as an option and will personalise a memento to gift to your guests on the day, like a pin badge or ribbon pin.

Likewise, asking your guests to donate to a charity instead of a present fund is a great way to give to a good cause or help others less fortunate that yourself.  Many couples have already lived together for years before their big day and have already bought most of the homeware items they’ll ever need, so requesting a charity donation via your gift list is a great idea – and will likely take the pressure of present buying off your guests, too!

Also, it’s worth mentioning that if you see the Gift Aid box, tick it!  This means that if you are a UK tax payer, by ticking this box you enable the charity to reclaim the tax applied to your donation, effectively increasing the amount of the donation. UK taxpayers making online donations always have the option to pay via Gift Aid, so keep a look out.  This allows charities to claim back 25p for every £1 you donate, and it doesn’t cost you any more money – so why wouldn’t you?!

Our fav charities that offer a wedding favour or a gift list service:

Help Refugees

This is part of the Choose Love movement and such a worthy cause right now in the current world climate.  “Help Refugees is one of the unsung heroes of the European refugee crisis, a young grassroots collective that has tried to create a more dynamic form of aid in Calais and Greece, where even seasoned aid workers admit their traditional models have failed.” – Patrick Kingsley, The Guardian.
https://helprefugees.org/fundraise/weddings-birthdays/

Why not even buy all your guests an apt ‘Choose Love’ tee as a wedding favour?
http://www.asos.com/search/choose-love?q=choose+love

British Heart Foundation

A charity close to my heart personally, that provides funds for more research into the prevention of heart disease.  ‘Our mission is to win the fight against cardiovascular disease and our vision is a world in which people do not die prematurely or suffer from cardiovascular disease.’
https://www.bhf.org.uk/get-involved/donate/give-in-celebration
and
https://giftshop.bhf.org.uk/gifts/wedding-favours

Macmillan Cancer Support

Another personally preferred charity of mine, as unfortunately there are millions of people affected by cancer every day – Macmillan is an amazing support for those living with cancer and their families.  I can’t recommend this charity enough for the thankless work they do every day.
https://www.macmillan.org.uk/donate/ways-to-support-us/weddings.html
and
https://shop.macmillan.org.uk/macmillan-weddings.html

Oxfam

‘Grows vegetables, fills classrooms, drills wells, empowers woman, fights poverty’ – a great all rounder (who have upped their PR game recently).
https://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/wedding-and-gift-lists/

NSPCC

‘Every childhood is worth fighting for’.  The NSPCC helps prevent and fight child abuse in the UK, in every way shape or form and your donation helps change a child’s life, from support to counselling to preventing abuse happening in the first place.
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-you-can-do/do-your-own-fundraising/favours-for-special-occasions/

Unicef

‘Share the happiness of your special day with children around the world with Unicef charity wedding favours.  Each favour provides life-saving and life-changing supplies, helping to protect children in danger.’  I love that you can gift vaccines and school supplies via this one.
https://market.unicef.org.uk/inspired-gifts/wedding-favours/

Brides Do Good

This is one I wanted to include even though they don’t offer a specific wedding gift list service, but it is a unique way to involve charity within your big day.  By buying your dress from Brides Do Good’s gorgeous selection, you are supporting their effort to end child marriage around the world, and you can even donate your dress to them after the wedding!  It’s an amazing social enterprise that connects women and protects young girls, collaborating with a variety of charity partners including Too Young To Wed and Plan International (direct donations to these separate charities are available on their site too), both of which fight child marriage and carry out vital work to advance children’s rights and equality for girls.  ‘Every year, 15 million girls are married before they’re 18. That’s 28 girls every minute. One every two seconds. Early marriage forces girls out of education and into a life of violence, fear and ill health. Brides do Good aims to help end the abominable tradition of child brides by 2030.’
https://www.bridesdogood.com/
and
https://www.bridesdogood.com/our-charity-partners

We think that donating to a good cause is one of the best ways you can give back during your wedding planning process, and I personally felt a bit self-indulgent during my own wedding journey so it felt good to ‘do good’ at the end – and help someone in need.  We donated to the British Heart Foundation and the Motor Neurone Disease Association via Prezola for our gift list two years ago when we got married for our charity wedding favours.

Some gifting for thought.

Best of luck with your planning!