A wedding candy buffet is a great alternative to traditional wedding favours and it gives your guests something to do at the reception. A candy buffet is a kind of pic n mix where guests create their own wedding favours using a selection of sweets, chocolates, or cookies. Here are some top tips if you’re planning a wedding candy buffet.
Provide a good selection
Have a wide range of sweet treats including rock style hard sweets, chocolates, jelly fruit sweets, sugared almonds, mints, and toffee or fudge to accommodate various tastes.
Include stickers
Provide stickers for guests to seal up their favour boxes or bags. Stickers can be a simple coloured label, or can be customised with your names and wedding date. Sealing their favours means they aren’t tempted to nibble on their sweets before the wedding dinner, and prevents the contents from tipping into their hand bags.
Collect containers
Large glass sweets jars, decorative baskets, and brightly coloured or patterned bowls are all good choices for your wedding candy buffet – just make sure you have nice looking containers and ones that are suited to your wedding theme. Make sure your favour boxes or bags are coordinated with your wedding table decorations as many of the favours will end up there once the guests return to their seats.
Include baked goods
Consider alternatives to sweets such as a cookies, muffins, or brownies. Cake pop are also a very fashionable choice. You could even have a ‘decorate your own’ cupcake bar with individual cup cake sized boxes to place the finished products in.
Provide instructions
If guests have never seen a wedding candy buffet before they may be a little confused by the whole thing. Display a sign explaining to guests that you want them to help themselves and fill up the boxes or bags provided with sweets.
Make space
If there is only space for one guest at a time people may be hesitant to take a favour as they may feel self conscious about being the only person helping themselves to the sweets. Have a long table so that more than one guest can make their favour at a time. This also makes it a more sociable activity.
Provide tongues
Keep the area clean and hygienic – the area around the bar should be regularly swept and cleaned as sweets are bound to end up on the floor or the surface of the stand. Make sure you offer scoops and tongs for your guests to pick up sweets, cookies, and chocolates instead of using their fingers.
Have some ready-made
Have some favours ready-made. These can be given to older guests that haven’t taken part in the favour making or guests that have been too self conscious to make their own.
Replenish regularly
Keep a limited amount of sweets on display to prevent your guests from over doing it – especially if you have a lot of children at the wedding. Keep a supply of sweets back to stock up your buffet so that it always looks full even after your greedier guests have helped themselves.
Think about position
Think about the position of your wedding candy buffet. You don’t want it to be in the main reception area as some may treat it as a dessert buffet and help themselves throughout the reception, but you also don’t want to place it in a walkway where guests will be in the way as they are making up their favours
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