The perfect homemade wedding favours your guests will use and love

Wedding favours can be expensive and can often end up in the bin. For our wedding, we wanted to create something that was homemade and most importantly something that our guests would use on the day.

Elderflower cordial is a delicious accompaniment to a warm summer’s day and can be added to a G&T or poured into water for the perfect refreshing summer drink.

We created the cordial a couple of weeks before the wedding as we knew it was only going to get busier in the lead up to the event. Also the flowers were perfectly in bloom (in June) and you can’t beat a countryside walk on a summer’s evening.

Elderflower cordial wedding favours

This recipe from River Cottage was recommended by a friend and works really well. Bear in mind, you’ll need to source citric acid which is readily available on Amazon and other online stores.

Ingredients

Makes about 2 litres

• About 25 elderflower heads
• Finely grated zest of 3 unwaxed lemons and 1 orange, plus their juice (about 150ml in total)
• 1kg sugar
• 1 heaped tsp citric acid

Method

1. Inspect the elderflower heads carefully and remove any insects. Place the flower heads (try and remove as much of the stems as you can) in a large bowl together with the orange and lemon zest.
2. Bring 1.5 litres water to the boil and pour over the elderflowers and citrus zest. Cover and leave overnight to infuse.
3. Strain the liquid through a piece of muslin and pour into a saucepan. Add the sugar, the lemon and orange juice and the citric acid (if using).
4. Heat gently to dissolve the sugar, then bring to a simmer and cook for a couple of minutes.
5. Use a funnel to pour the hot syrup into sterilised bottles. Seal the bottles with swing-top lids, sterilised screw-tops or corks.

The miniature glass bottles were purchased from Amazon. Don’t forget to sterilise them before pouring the elderflower in; Milton sterilising fluid works well.

The favours were finished off with some homemade labels using recycled stock and twine.