Help with Wedding Awesomeness

August 12, 2017 1:21 PM

Please help me find miniature replicas of the classic Quaker Oats container that I can buy online. I'm looking for plain cardboard. I'll print the labels.

My friends are having a Quaker wedding and we want to surprise them with little* Quaker Oats containers with oats in them that people can throw like they throw rice. I have someone that can print the labels, but I want to find a small cylindrical cardboard container with a lid that I can buy online. My Google Fu is failing miserably. Help?

*by little I mean smaller than a play doh can, but I'm open

posted by orsonet to Home & Garden (14 answers total)

What about a baking powder container?
posted by scrubjay at 1:31 PM on August 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

something like this? Not at all cheap. They have other sizes too.
posted by BillMcMurdo at 1:32 PM on August 12, 2017

Ulin's Pillow Boxes might convert the spirit of the thing with your labels. Or you could buy long tubes and end caps and cut the tubes down to size.
posted by Ideefixe at 1:44 PM on August 12, 2017

Yeah, buy long tubes cheaper, cut them down, affix caps and label. You don't need containers so much as you need tubes and caps. If you want them to be idiot proof you can glue the bottom cap.

You don't say how many you need, but ULINE has 100 caps at 1.5" diameter for $13.

You can get 6" tubes from them for about 50 cents each, depending on how many you buy.

It will actually be important to get the aspect ratio right, but if you assume quaker oats are twice as tall as they are wide (not true, they are a little less tall), then that gets you four caps to make two mini-oat tubes per 1.5"X6" tube (you can of course save money by buying longer tubes from ULINE and cutting more per tube. If you play around with the arithmetic you can minimize waste. You may also need/want wider diameters, but they have those too.

So ballpark worst case using ULINE and free labels/time is roughly $0.51 per unit (four caps * 13cents + 1 tube at 50 cents = 102 cents for two).
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:53 PM on August 12, 2017

How about these. They are super cheap, with a cute label they'll get the point across, and that foldy top is so satisfying.
posted by defreckled at 2:20 PM on August 12, 2017

If you can get the handles off of these miniature paint cans, they seem like they'd work. If not, some of the other items on this site might be OK (mini mason jars?). Disclaimer: I know nothing about this company.
posted by FencingGal at 2:54 PM on August 12, 2017

I am a Quaker and was married in the manner of Friends. This would not have been appropriate at our wedding, partly because there was no aisle that we recessed down, and thus no opportunity for rice/oat throwing, and partly because it's a ritual-ish thing, and partly because Quaker Oats is not owned by Quakers. I would check with your friends before you do this.
posted by fancyoats at 7:50 PM on August 12, 2017 [13 favorites]

I know several Quakers (including my husband) and I think they would find a that surprise to be at best, baffling and at worst, inappropriate. Perhaps it is different in the American tradition (all the Quakers I know are British) but I would check with your friends or at least some other Quakers close to them before planning this.
posted by cpatterson at 11:41 PM on August 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

I agree with the last two posters: Quaker gatherings are very much about simplicity. The emphasis is on the people around you, not on ritual. I am not sure where oat throwing would fit in.
posted by Crystal Fox at 7:30 AM on August 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. And as for the cultural sensitivity - they aren't Quaker, they are borrowing some Quaker ideas for the actual service, the rest of the wedding looks like a regular wedding. I promise I'm not going to crash a Quaker wedding with gag gifts.
posted by orsonet at 9:14 AM on August 13, 2017

I gently suggest that involving oatmeal at a wedding that's borrowing from Quakers but doesn't involve any actual Quakers is not a culturally sensitive thing to do. Imagine how you'd explain it if any real-life Quakers stopped by and asked what you were doing.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:10 AM on August 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

Respectfully, the "oh haha, Quaker Oats," "where's your big black hat," or "you're Friends, you must be really friendly" stuff is eye-rolly in the most casual situations and/or for school-age Quakers to hear (like, all the time), but making fun of a religion (and that is what this idea is, in my view) in a setting where the religious traditions are being (benignly and sensitively, I assume) appropriated would truly not be appreciated by any Quakers (like myself) that I've ever met. And I do get that there may not be Quakers there to offend to their faces.
posted by Pax at 7:10 PM on August 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oh gosh, your update makes it even worse! If your friends are borrowing Quaker elements for their wedding because they have personal or spiritual resonance for them, I am sure they won't care for the joke. And of course there don't need to be any actual Quakers there for it to be offensive...
posted by cpatterson at 12:00 AM on August 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

I concur with corpse in the library.

First of all, Quakers are very low-key about their religion and you have no idea if any are in attendance. Secondly, it's even less cool think it okay to get all jokey about Quakers behind their backs, as it were. Thirdly, don't make fun of the wedding at the wedding, yo.

I "borrowed" from the legacy of Quakers for my own wedding (specifically that in PA you can marry without an officiant), and it most certainly did have personal significance for me, even though I was not raised Quaker and I am staunchly agnostic.
posted by desuetude at 3:28 PM on August 14, 2017 [3 favorites]