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What Are Wedding Bubbles?

B. Miller
B. Miller

Wedding bubbles are a type of wedding accessory that are often distributed to guests when they first arrive at the ceremony. Then, after the bride and groom are married, and are exiting the ceremony location, guests can blow bubbles at them, rather than doing the more traditional activity of throwing rice or birdseed. Many people use wedding bubbles in lieu of these other things at their wedding because it can be more fun for people to do, especially kids. Some people find that rice or birdseed on the ground could also be slippery and lead to falls, but bubbles cause no such worry and there is nothing to clean up later.

One of the benefits to wedding bubbles is that they are fairly inexpensive and can be purchased in bulk from crafts stores or wedding web sites. They come in small, individual bottles with a cap that can be removed to use the attached bubble wand. It may be possible to get customized wedding bubbles, with a printed label wrapped around the bottle. Some brides and grooms customize the bottles by themselves by tying a ribbon around the bottle to match the wedding colors, and perhaps affixing a label or other trinket for decoration.

Some people use wedding bubbles as a favor placed at each table setting.
Some people use wedding bubbles as a favor placed at each table setting.

Some couples choose to designate a child in the family to pass out the wedding bubbles as guests arrive at the ceremony. This can be a great way to get a child involved in the wedding without needing to make him or her part of the ceremony. This can be good if the couple has already designated a flower girl or ring bearer, or if they just prefer not to have younger children in the ceremony for the extra stress it causes. Kids will generally welcome this type of task and will have fun doing it.

Wedding bubbles might be passed out by a ring bearer or flower girl.
Wedding bubbles might be passed out by a ring bearer or flower girl.

Other people choose to use wedding bubbles as a type of wedding favor and save money this way. In this case it might be best to have the bubbles sitting at each place setting when people sit down to dinner at the reception. Of course, then they can't be used right after the ceremony, but they can be used following the meal.

Another option for wedding bubbles is to hand them out as favors at a bachelorette party. The women hosting the bachelorette party will often prepare fun gift packs for the other guests. Bubbles can be a part of those packs; there are plenty of customizable bag options, such as tote bags, to prepare nice gift packs.

Discussion Comments

anon953023

I agree with @croydon on this. Unless you have dozens of guests diligently blowing bubbles at the same time, the effect may be a bit of a letdown. Renting a bubble machine would provide the volume of bubbles needed to have visual impact.

I personally don't like to throw rice or bird seed because it can sting if people take a direct hit. The idea of rice causing birds to get bloated is largely a myth, but it can still be a mess to clean up, especially if it rains later that day.

clintflint

@croydon - This is a really cute idea. I wouldn't even buy specialty bottles for this. I'd just get nice looking cheap bottles and make my own mixture, and then maybe add something like a ribbon to each bottle.

I've never liked the idea of rice, because I've heard it's very bad for the local birds, since they aren't used to eating that kind of food. And confetti tends to be very difficult to clean up properly.

Another idea I've always liked was people waving ribbons around, but you would need to know they weren't going to just toss the ribbons on the ground afterwards and that seems like it would be a pain.

Although I suppose there is always the risk that people will discard the bottle the bubbles come in. So I guess you've just got to be prepared to clean up no matter what option you take.

croydon

@MrsPramm - You don't want to give out more than a tiny bit of mixture to each person anyway. I usually see them as wedding favors, with bubbles in miniature champagne bottles.

If I was going to do this, I'd give out the bubbles to anyone who wants them and then hire a machine to do the rest. Kids love bubble machines anyway and it will ensure that there are enough bubbles to show up in the pictures.

A bubble machine isn't that expensive to hire, so it's still pretty cost effective.

MrsPramm

Rice or seeds or confetti might end up being slippery, but bubble mixture can as well, especially if you give the bottles to children. The bubbles themselves won't be too bad, but if the bottles spill you end up with soapy water all over the floor and church floors in particular tend to be made of very smooth tiles. So just make sure that you either give out very tiny bottles for the wedding bubbles or that there is no way to spill the mixture.

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    • Some people use wedding bubbles as a favor placed at each table setting.
      By: rodho
      Some people use wedding bubbles as a favor placed at each table setting.
    • Wedding bubbles might be passed out by a ring bearer or flower girl.
      By: zagorodnaya
      Wedding bubbles might be passed out by a ring bearer or flower girl.