Thursday, March 5, 2009

A color-coordinated and delicious candy buffet!

Like Emilie, I decided to have edible favors for our reception since those are what I personally love receiving at weddings. My ideas ranged from homemade cookies, to chocolate mice, to cupcakes. During my research, I kept coming upon beautiful pictures of candies in different glass jars. The candy buffet was a trend I definitely wanted to jump on – my now-husband and I love candy!

There was almost too much candy to choose from, but since I wanted the spread to match our wedding colors, the field of choices narrowed down a bit. I wanted white, pink, and burgundy (ok, red will do too) candies. After some price comparison, I ordered bulk candy from online supplier metrocandy and estimated 1/3 pound per person. The choices included: white Jordan almonds, sour watermelon belts, raspberry fruit slices, pink rock candy, red and pink jelly beans, malt balls (with a white candy coating), and sour cherries. I bought vases of all different sizes from the local arts and crafts store, Michaels. My friend who works in the restaurant business bought small silver candy scoops from a wholesale supplier for me.

Here's one scoop in action:


How were the guests going to take the candy home? I toyed with the idea of Chinese takeout boxes, but they weren't quite the look as I was looking for. One day, I was browsing a food packaging website, nashvillewraps, and found small frosted tin tie bags. They were the perfect size and less bulky than the takeout boxes. I quickly ordered these, plus customized labels from myweddinglabels to put on the bags. Emilie also whipped up some labels to put on the candy jars to complete the look.

See how cute the bags are:

We found out after the reception that a lot of our guests have not seen a candy buffet before and were very happy to see the display at the reception. It was fun to see which candy was the most popular (watermelon belts were gone by the time I got a chance to check the spread out!). The hotel packed up the leftover candies for us at the end of the night. My husband took everything to work with him when we came back from our honeymoon two weeks later, along with the extra customized candy bags. This mini-candy buffet was a huge hit at his workplace and it was a great way to make sure nothing got wasted!

Here are pictures of the candy buffet at our wedding reception:

All pictures courtesy of Sun Photographics.

If you want help with creating your own candy buffet, please contact us at info@pinkorchidweddings.com! We would love to help you out!

~Fiona

8 comments:

jiggawha804 said...

remember when you asked me to bake 1000 cookies for your wedding!!

crazy lady. I will bake YOU a batch of cookies soon tho :)
-Yvonne

Brittany Blando said...

LUVVVVVVVV this idea! So fun for the guests! I'm looking forward to working with you in 2009!!! :-)!!!

MVanderLugt said...

This is such a cute idea! I thought about doing this too... but my wedding is in central valley CA in early august and i'm worried about candy melting! My other idea was to get mini candy scoops for each guest with a little bit of candy wrapped in cellophane... but i'm not sure if my budget will allow that- my guest count will prob be anywhere from 300-350... how many were at your wedding? Any ideas on where i could get cheap mini scoops?

Pink Orchid Weddings said...

Hello! Fiona's wedding had around 150 guests. There are a lot of places to get mini scoops online. Sur La Table has some mini scoops for just over $1 each!

Unknown said...

I've been looking for bags like these... where did you get them?

Anonymous said...

Where did you get these cute bags?

Neucky said...

I have been looking for the frosted tin tie bags everywhere and cannot locate. We did you find these? I might end up using gold bags but like the look of translucent ones.

Anonymous said...

I love this idea! I'm planning a buffet of my own for our wedding in July... Where did you get the candy? Are there any "cheap" candy stores?