A Wedding Reception Idea: Candy Buffet

If you’ve been knee-deep in wedding planning, chances are you’ve heard of the “candy buffet” or “candy bar” wherein a table-long array of the sweetest and colorful candy is displayed for your guests to dig in.  The Wedding Candy Buffet made its debut to wedding guests all over the nation within the past few years and there are no signs of the wedding candy bar concept slowing down.  Wedding candy buffets are genius, really, and super simple.  The following are a few wedding candy buffet ideas.

First, decide on the type of candy you’d like to display in your wedding candy bar buffet.  Not as easy as you may think.  There exists hundreds of hard and soft candy in every color of the rainbow.  Begin with your childhood favorites and then work your way up to your most recent faves.  Imagine candied mints, colorful jelly beans, wrapped chocolates, licorice sticks, and even childhood lollipops gracing your wedding candy buffet!  Try to narrow down your choices to your favorite top 10 all-time favorite candy.

Next select the containers in which you will exhibit your sweet treats.  Clear glass jars are the vessels of choice.  Create a standout showcase with a mixture of narrow and wide glass jars to tall and short glass containers.  Indicate each jar’s contents with a decorative tent card displayed in front of the container.  Alternatively, handwrite the name of the candy onto a beautiful sticker and affix to the front of the glass jar.  Provide a candy scoop by the candy jar for your guests to serve themselves a helping of the sweet treats.

Lastly, choose a generously-sized yet portable container that your guests can use to load up with their goodies and take home.  Gourmet food paper bags personalized with your names and wedding date is the perfect idea.  Or transform Chinese takeout boxes into a great container for your memorable wedding candy buffet.  Glassine envelopes can be spruced up with personalized labels resulting in creative candy buffet packaging.

By offering an “all-you-can-eat, make-your-own” experience, you’ll invite your guests to create their own wedding favors that they’ll be sure to enjoy!  The wedding candy buffet is a great way to lend your guests a festive atmosphere at your wedding!

Top Nine DIY Wedding Favors

Creating your own set of distinctive wedding favors does not mean you have to forgo quality.  The following is a creative list of inexpensive and practical do it yourself wedding favors.

1). Lottery Scratch-off Tickets. With scratch-off lotto tickets, there will be no doubt that each of your guests will use their wedding favors.  Simply place your scratch-off ticket into glassine envelopes and affix decorative personalized labels that cleverly read “Lucky in Love”.  For scratching, don’t forget to include in the envelope a penny minted in the year that you’re to be married.  A perfect DIY wedding favor for any season!

2). Forced Bulbs. Take 2 to 3 forced bulbs (eg: paperwhites, amaryllis) and place them inside a drawstring burlap bag or jute bag.  Dangle a personalized hang tag that reads “Love Blooms” from the drawstrings.  Makes great fall wedding favors or winter wedding favors!

3). Homemade Jam. Share your family recipe for sweet homemade jam by canning them into miniature glass jars.  Tie a gingham wedding ribbon around the neck of the jar.  Hang a custom label that reads your names and wedding date.

4). Chocolate Bars. Perfect for the inner-graphic designer in you.  Remove the original paper wrapper and take note of its measurements.  Based on these measurements, design a new wrapper using your favorite illustrating software.  Print your design onto colored paper.  Wrap your new design around the chocolate bars.  Use double-sided tape to secure the ends of the paper wrapper.

5). Pears.  Pears are a delicious fruit that makes a wonderful symbol of your status as the “perfect pair.”  Create a rubber stamp with your names and date and the phrase “The Perfect Pair.”  Stamp onto squares of kraft paper or light-weight butcher paper.  Wrap around each pear.  Arrange in a rustic wood crate for the guests to take home with them.

6). Homemade Chocolates. Make homemade chocolates using one of the many molds out in the market today.  Put some of these sweets in a little translucent bag.  Tie a ribbon around the neck of the bag and dangle a tag that reads “Thank You.”

7). Homemade Cookies. Using a family secret recipe, bake cookies and place them in a small baker’s box.  Wrap in red and white baker’s twine and a darling hang tag that reads “Sweet Treats.”

8). Small Bouquet of Flowers. Place small sprigs of flowers into plastic vials.  Wrap several vials together with decorative fabric and tie with a colorful ribbon.  Display all together in a wicker basket for the guests’ to help themselves.

9). Small Potted Herbs. Small pots of thyme, rosemary and basil make practical wedding favors for a spring wedding or garden theme event.  Wrap a colorful ribbon printed with your names and wedding date around the clay pot to personalize the look.

Cheap Wedding Favors?

Jars of Honey as Wedding Favors

Smart couple that you are, you’re holding to a budget for your wedding. Starting off in your married life with debt from the wedding hanging over your heads isn’t a picnic. As you know, everything is pretty expensive these days. Just take a look at the price of a gallon of gas, a loaf of bread, or gallon of milk. We all need to be frugal in our day to day lives and planning a wedding is no exception.

If you and your fiancé are paying for your wedding yourself, you really know how expensive things can get. It seems everyone from the reception hall, the caterer, florist, and music providers are telling you they need money. Watching pennies when planning the wedding will really pay off in the future. Read more

Tips to Personalize Your Wedding

source: Bridalguide.com

There are plenty of ways that a bride and groom can personalize their wedding. Adding their own little touches or even big touches into their wedding can make their wedding day their very own. From everything from personalized favors to incorporating heritage or culture into your wedding, here are several ways that you can personalize your wedding day.

Instead of using boring numbers for your seating arrangements at your wedding ceremony, use names of places or things that have to do with your relationship. It could be things like places that you have visited, your favorite foods, the letters from your last name or any other hobbies or interests that you have.

Choose a first dance song that is not so ordinary. If you really want to get daring, take a couple dance classes before your wedding and really wow the socks off your guests. They will be expecting the same old slow song first wedding dance and instead you can give them a tango or fox trot routine. If you are really, really daring, choose a dance song and choreograph a dance routine to it.

For the wedding reception menu, re-create what you ate on your first date. If you went to an Italian restaurant, you can have rigatoni, sausage, lasagna, and chicken parmigiana for your menu. Another option is to have your favorite restaurant cater the wedding for you.

A simple way to add your own personalization to your wedding, is to buy personalized wedding favors. These favors can have your names, date of the wedding, or just your monogram. There are a variety of favors that you can choose from such as candy bars, mint tins, and CDs.

Incorporate any cultural traditions into your wedding ceremony or reception. You may have to do some research for this, but this is a great way to remember your family and its past heritage. You can easily find wedding traditions online for just about any culture or nationality.

If you are musically gifted, then you can sing or play your spouse a song. This is a great way to make your wedding your very own and pay such a special tribute to your new spouse. Even if you are not musically inclined, you can always write a poem for them or even just recite a love poem.

Instead of having a traditional wedding guest book, have your guests write advice and well wishes on pieces of paper. You can then take those pieces of paper and make your own scrapbook out of them. This way you actually have nice messages from your guests rather than just their name signed in a book.

Show your personalization with your wedding cake. Use a personalized wedding cake topper to show off your new name or monogram on your cake. This is a very trendy idea but still adds originality to your wedding, as it says who you are now as a couple.

Display pictures of your parents, grandparents, and siblings from their weddings at a special table. This is a unique way to involve your family and show that you are all one extended family. It also celebrates the ceremony of marriage and the commitment that is made.

There are plenty of ways that a couple can personalize their wedding. The best way is to think of what your interests and hobbies are as a couple and draw from those and your past to come up with some great ideas.

Related articles

• The Do It Yourself Wedding Planning Guide (weddingsetups.com)
• How to Choose a Wedding Theme (weddingsetups.com)
• Brush up on those Dance moves with the Dance Doctor (weddingsetups.com)

Spring and Summer Wedding Favors are Hot Hot Hot

2010 Spring and Summer Wedding Favors Celebrate the Balm-y Weather

Here we are, right in the middle of wedding season! If you’re getting married in the next few months, here’s your chance to see several (but not all!) of the newly launched spring and summer wedding favors (and bridal shower favors!) from top-tier wedding favor designer Kate Aspen.

Let’s start with lip balms and favor boxes. Yes, lip balms are much-appreciated bridal shower and wedding favors, because the sun that warms our days also brings us dry, cracked lips. Lip balm favors have been around for a while but, this year, Kate Aspen ups the ante with two styles and dozens upon dozens of personalization options!

“Sweet Kisses” Lip Balm Container                                           “Love & Kisses” Lip Balm StickKate Aspen’s new “Make It Yours” favor box collection and Icon favor boxes are definitely taking the art of favor box design to a higher level.  The top three are from the personalized “make it yours” collection and the next three are Icon boxes!

The Icon favor boxes below are “With This Ring,” “Express Your Love,” and “For the Love Birds!”

If your passion is butterflies or beautiful birds, Kate has something for you, too. First, the butterflies—one of spring and summer’s most welcome ambassadors!

Did you notice the delicate, silver-finish butterfly charm on the “Spring Elegance” Laser-Cut Butterfly favor boxes on the right? Touches like that and the gift-ready creative packaging of hundreds of their favors—not to mention affordability—have  set Kate Aspen’s favors apart for years!  But don’t take it from me. I’ll let these next favors tweet for themselves—they’re salt and pepper shakers, a bronze-finish metal nest tea light holder and a sweet songbird taking a bath in a place card holder!

I’ve saved something fabulous for my big finish. I’ll admit there’s nothing new about drink mixes—coffee, tea, lemonade, hot chocolate, etc. –have been around for a while. What spices up Kate Aspen’s new drink mixes—and your reception tables—is the sensational, eye-catching, colorful gift presentation!

Check out “Main Squeeze” Lemonade Mix, “Razzle Dazzle” Raspberry Iced Tea Mix and “Mix & Mingle” Key Lime Margarita Mix!

Thirsty for more? Kate Aspen wedding favors and bridal shower favors are featured on Kate Aspen’s “preferred vendor online favor sites” like My Wedding Favors and others. Remember—they’re called favors because they do something special for someone. They thank your guests for celebrating the most amazing day of your life—and that deserves something special!

Susan Hawkins is senior copywriter and a blogger for My Wedding Favors, a leading online retailer of top-tier wedding favors, bridal shower favors and wedding accessories.

Winter Weddings – Why Not?

photo by Evandro Miquelito

You might not want to go this extreme with a winter wedding, but you also might not want to wait until spring or summer to tie the knot.  There are a lot of cool things (pun TOTALLY intended) that you can do for a winter wedding that you can’t for a wedding in warmer months, so go for it!

Two Words:  Snow Globes

photo by graftedno1

You can have snow globes as a part of your centerpiece decorations, you can have snow globes as wedding favors, or you can have really nice, high-end snow globes as your attendant gifts.  Everybody loves a nice snow globe!

Excuse to Go Formal

photo by madmolecule

Since you know the reception will be indoors, why not make your wedding a black tie affair?  You don’t have to spend a fortune on the food and drink, but it gives everyone a great excuse to don their finery and look their absolute best.  Plus, how gorgeous will your photos be?

Food and Drink

photo by photo kitten

A summer reception means that extra sweet, extra warm, and extra decadent is a little over-the-top.  Use this winter wedding as an excuse to break out the bisque, serve the cheesecake, and serve up some belly-warming holiday spirits.  Two great ones to try?  How about eggnog?  A classic holiday drink, it’s got a creamy, nutmeggy taste and if you put spiced rum or bourbon in it you’ll have your guests feeling all warm and cozy.  Another great?  How about a Peppermint Martini with a candy cane rim?  Garnish with a mini-candy cane and you’ll have tasty AND pretty cocktails.

Have a wintertime wedding to rival any fairy tale.  And make sure you send us some pictures!

Creative Wedding Favors

The wedding favours were little figurines that were boxed as matching pairs. Chad found an amusing way of playing with these little bubble bottoms; using them to head butt each other. We found 2 minutes of pleasure in this.

To a new bride and groom, wedding guests are special. Each guest has been painstakingly selected based on love, friendship, family dynamics and ‘other reasons’ that maybe only the marrying couple is aware of. For the invited guests, a memento or two can be a nice reminder of that special day.

Matchbook covers, candies, as well as other traditional items have been offered in the past; and brides often spend hours and hours poring over magazines and then selecting large quantities of these trinkets…usually out of exasperation, and then quickly start placing orders without a moment’s hesitation. Why? Well…because it is expected of them. Many of the items, although cute…can be quite useless; and many end up in boxes and junk drawers. Over the last few years, the selections have changed considerably, and there are quite a number of different types of wedding favors to choose from these days.

For example: Wine stoppers, small digital clocks, personalized golf balls, miniature manicure sets, sewing kits, coasters, and book marks can be wonderful alternatives to candy and salt shakers. These items can be selected based on budget, and then personalized and packaged in ways that fit in beautifully with the wedding’s theme and personalities of the bride and groom.

Many of these gifts, although high-tech, can be surprisingly inexpensive. Mercifully, items of more practical use can now be given to the honored guests. Please keep in mind: Wedding favors are usually different than bridal shower favors, in that they are less “frou-frou”, and have a much broader guest appeal. This ultimately requires that a wedding couple recognize the difference between them; and make their selections accordingly. And so, if enough thought is given to choosing of your special wedding favors; your guests can be both…grateful , as well as delighted!

Photo by Sifu Renka

Related articles

• Weddings Sweet as Candy (weddingsetups.com)
• 5 Cool Bridal Wedding Registries Couples Will Love (verybestsites.com)
• Wedding Favors for Foodies (friendseat.com)