Wedding Emergency Kit: Must-Haves for Your Wedding Survival Kit
Keep yourself looking and feeling fresh on your wedding day with a wedding survival kit - here's what you need to include
We have included third party products to help you navigate and enjoy life’s biggest moments. Purchases made through links on this page may earn us a commission.
People often talk about how your wedding will be the best day of your life, and it certainly is. Something they don’t always mention - it’s also a long day!
With this in mind, a wedding survival kit is as essential as the wedding cake and confetti, in our eyes. Typically known as a bridal party survival kit, we like to call it a wedding party survival kit, as not all weddings have a bride - and grooms and the wedding party in general need a survival kit just as much.
What is a Wedding Day Survival Kit?
A wedding party survival kit is a Mary Poppins-style bag filled with all the little things you need to keep you looking and feeling your best right until the very last dance of the night.
As much as we'd love everything to go perfectly on the day, there's always a chance that you'll get a blister or a headache, a button will fall off or your mascara might smudge. Your emergency wedding kit includes everything you might need to solve any problem that arises, from broken nails to rubbing shoes, errant hair extensions to smudged lipstick.
Who Looks After the Wedding Survival Kit?
This role traditionally falls to a member of the wedding party, but you could ask your mum or a close friend who isn't in the wedding party to keep it safe too.
There are a lot of things you might need - and you don’t want someone to have to carry it around all day, so as well as a mini emergency kit of hair clips, tissues and plasters, we recommend keeping a roomy bag with all the essentials (such as a pair of flats, tampons, a hairbrush and extra tights), in your ‘getting ready’ room that you can nip back to when needed.
Read on for a full list of essentials to pop in your wedding survival kit and the handiest emergency kit bags to store it all in, or use the links below to hop to the section you need the most:
What is in a Wedding Survival Kit?
This sounds like a lot, but you’ll thank us when you have them to hand on the big day…
Essentials:
- Painkillers
- Safety pins
- Tissues
- Face wipes (to tidy up eye makeup smudges)
- Mints or a small bottle of mouthwash
- Plasters/blister plasters
- Tampons/sanitary pads
- Indigestion tablets
- Dental floss
Hair and Beauty:
- Perfume
- Cotton buds (eco-friendly, please!)
- Mini deodorant
- Hairspray
- Dry shampoo
- Hair pins
- Lip gloss/lipstick (buy a match to the one your makeup artist is using)
- Concealer
- Waterproof mascara
- Setting powder
- Oil blotting sheets
- Nail file
- False nail glue
- Nail polish to match your nails
- Clear nail varnish (to stop runs in tights)
- False eyelash glue
- Cotton buds
- Anti-chafing stick (we love Body Glide under dresses in the summer)
- Small hair brush
Clothing and Accessories:
- Needle and thread (this £4.99 kit from Amazon has all you need)
- Safety pins
- Boob tape
- Stain remover wipes
- White chalk (to mask light stains)
- Crochet hook (if your dress has lots of buttons)
- Gel pads for feet (Scholl Party Feet get consistently good review)
- Spare pair of flat shoes (for sore feet in the evening)
- Spare tights
- Small pair of scissors
- Lint roller
Additional Extras for the Bag
While these aren't essentials, they'll be much appreciated on the day:
- Power bank
- Moisturising eye drops
- Lip balm
- Snacks
- Copy of the day's itinerary and timings
- Hair straightener or curler for evening touch-ups
- Sunblock
- Hand warmers (if you’re marrying somewhere cold)
- Insect repellent (if it's midge season)
Groom Survival Kit
The groom might run into a calamity on the big day too, so we’re sure he’d appreciate a groom’s emergency kit made up for him too.
- Shoe polish
- Extra pair of shoe laces
- Chewing gum
- Lint roller
- Hair gel/spray
- Comb
- Deodorant
- Spare button, needle and thread
- Spare cufflinks
Wedding and Bridal Party Emergency Kit
Whether for your wedding party, or guests in general, a selection of essentials is always helpful - whether you place it in the bathroom for guests to dive into in an emergency, or make one up for each member of your wedding party, these are the goodies we’d include…
- Painkillers
- Plasters
- Deodorant
- Makeup wipes
- Hairspray
- Dry shampoo
- Mints
We think it’d be excessive to buy lash and nail glue for every member of your wedding party, so perhaps they can use yours if one of them has a beauty related emergency.
The same goes for power banks and snacks - while it would be nice to buy one for everyone, it’s not essential!
Ready Made Wedding Survival Kits
No time to gather all the goodies? Not to worry, ready made wedding survival kits are available, with the hard work done for you!
1. Bride Squad Emergency Kit - Customised Kits
This wedding survival kit comes in three different sizes, regular, premium and deluxe. The regular kit contains all the essentials, from tissues and plasters, to hand sanitiser and a sewing kit. The premium kit goes one step further, including dental floss, a mouth wash and a nail file, while deluxe has everything you could think of, from earring backs and deodorant to vitamin C and painkillers.
- Expert Take: If you’re buying one of these from each member of your wedding party, we’d probably stick with the regular kit, as the price would soon mount up if you bought several deluxe kits!
2. Wedding Emergency Kit - The SOS Kits
This box houses everything you could possibly need to solve a wedding-related emergency, with over 99 handpicked items designed to remedy any issue. As well as face cloths, tweezers and breath freshening strips, there are also luxury items in this kit, such as a collagen lip mask for plumping your pout.
- Expert Take: As well as a sewing kit and stain removal, there’s a QR code you can scan in this box, to teach you how to fix a hem, sew a button and tackle stains - genius!
3. Personalised Bride To Be Survival Kit - The Little Picture Company
Housed in a keepsake tin, this is a more luxury take on a wedding survival kit than a practical one, housing ever-useful safety pins as well as less essential items, such as a candle, matches and a compact mirror.
- Expert Take: This is a lovely gift, but if you’re after practical items, we’d probably buy our own bag and stock up on the essentials such as cotton buds and deodorant and make our own.
4. Wedding Survival Kit Emergency - Gems Wedding Supplies
For the groom and groomsmen, this sensible black washbag is home to a pair of black socks for a last-minute wardrobe fix, a razor for any forgotten touch-ups, cotton buds and plasters, plus a needle and thread for runaway buttons, safety pins and tweezer, plus tissues and more.
- Expert Take: While this bag is small enough to slip into a suit pocket, it easily holds everything someone might need in a wedding emergency, for a budget-friendly price
DIY Wedding Survival Kit Bags
If you want to create bespoke wedding survival kits, you’re in luck! There are countless bags out there just waiting to be filled with emergency essentials. These are a few of our faves…
5. Personalised Wedding Day Kit - Drifting Ducks
We love this simple yet stylish wedding day kit bag. Personalised with your name - or the name of your wedding party, this is perfect for everyone who needs an emergency kit on the big day. Drifting Ducks has endless five star reviews, so you know you’re in good hands.
- Expert Take: This wedding survival kit mag measures 15cm x 24cm, so before you buy the contents to go inside, make sure they’re going to fit!
6. Diamante Bride Bag - Love The Links
Black is practical colour for your wedding emergency kit because it won’t show up any makeup smudges or drink spillages. We love the sparkling diamante design, plus the back of the pouch can be personalised to have your name and wedding date, if you so wish.
- Expert Take: You can add a personalised metal tag to the zip too, for another bespoke touch. The message is up to you, we like ‘good luck’ but an in joke would be fun too. Add £6.99 for the personalised zip.
7. Personalised Wedding Day Tote Bag - Laura Stanley Designs
If you’re going all in with your emergency kit, including flip flops and hair tools for touch-ups, you’ll need a bigger bag, like this customisable tote, big enough for all the larger essentials.
While the bag looks compact, it has a sizeable 5cm gusset, so is big enough for all of your emergency kit.
- Expert Take: We especially like the size of this bag as it will be useful for going forward in married life, whether you use it for the gym or to do your shopping.
8. Personalised Name Wedding Bag - Vincenza Silvia Cream
The most chic of our wedding emergency kit bags, this is as perfect for honeymoon trips to the beach as it is for storing all your wedding emergency goodies. You can choose from six different fonts, and you can upgrade to include a frosted drinks glass and a jewellery box, if you so wish.
- Expert Take: This bag is sturdy enough to be used again and again, big enough for tablets and laptops for work, and the black canvas bottom means it won’t show dirt.
10. Personalised Clear Makeup Bag - Mylee London
Ideal for the low maintenance bride who only wants plasters, painkillers and a few makeup bits in her emergency kit, this clear makeup bag is the perfect home for your wedding emergency kit. It doesn’t have to say bride - you can choose up to six letters, making it ideal if you want to give to your wedding party, as you can customise with their initials.
- Expert Take: Because this is clear, it makes for an ideal bag to take on flights with you. Honeymoon, here we come!
Now your wedding emergency kit is sorted, what about your wedding lipstick?
