I went to a fiesta-themed bridal shower recently that had a taco bar and sangria and bright decorations. It was a rollicking good way to spend the afternoon.

I was especially charmed by the favors, which somehow managed to be fun, sensible and cute, all at once. They were little bags of candies with a CD of love songs in a sleeve featuring a photo from the bride and groom’s engagement shoot. Here’s a close-up.

Adorable, no?

Naturally, the next thing I did was contact hostesses Emily and Angela to ask how they put these together, so I could share it with you guys. Here’s what Emily said:

There wasn’t much to it really. I wanted to give everyone a favor they might actually enjoy (as opposed to a personalized mint tin), and I also didn’t want to spend a ton of money. Since we had tacos, I thought it would be cute to fill gift bags with Mexican candies.

• The bags and candies were from the 99¢ store.
• To come up with the songs for the CD, I combed through my iTunes library for wedding/love/forever songs and Google-searched “wedding songs.”
• I found a template for the CD cover online and stole the cute picture from [bride] Kara’s Facebook album.
• Printed them off and spent an evening cutting and pasting the covers, then assembling the bags.
• I would have preferred to use a hole punch to put together the bag and CD with the ribbon, but I didn’t have one, so I just stapled the ribbon, bag and CD together and tried to cover up the staple with the ribbon. [Note from editor: She did a good job. I didn't notice the staple at all.]
• I got the blank CDs from the 99¢ store (3 for .99) and the ribbon, too.
• In total, I spent $12 at the 99¢ store and $7 on iTunes for the 10 gift bags, making each bag just under $2!

Thanks for sharing, Emily! And congrats to the soon-to-be-married Kara!