There’s a new trend among sweet-toothed brides: dessert-only receptions. Rather than doling out money for a huge meal and attempting to satisfy all your guests’ taste preferences, consider serving only an assortment of delicious after-dinner sweets.
By skipping straight to the best part of the meal, you actually expand your options. Since guests won’t be stuffed from a three-course dinner, they’ll have more room to satisfy their sweet tooth and try a variety of desserts. And since you won’t be paying the high cost of feeding your guests an entire meal, you have more of a budget to splurge on sweets.
Most dessert-only receptions provide guests with an array of artfully displayed, bite-sized confections. To ensure variety and creativity, consider flavor, texture, and size of your desserts. Including chocolate, fruit, nut, and vanilla options will cover all your flavor bases, while mixing up the textures to include crunchy, chewy, and creamy will surely give everyone something to enjoy. And in this case, smaller is better. You can easily serve bite-size portions, rather than large slices, of your favorite cakes, brownies, cookies and cheesecakes. Pie fillings can simply be baked in turnover form for easy eating. By creatively thinking about how to prepare your favorite sweets, you can bring nearly anything to the wedding dessert table.
Truffles, cookies, cannolis, macaroons, tarts, brownies, fudge, caramels, cheesecakes, turnovers, puddings, candies, doughnuts, shortbreads – nothing is off limits, as long as it’s sweet and delicious!
Choosing desserts in your color scheme adds even more fun to this sweet idea!
Use serving platters of different styles and materials for a vintage, eclectic look.
For inspiration on how to design and arrange the main course of your dessert-only reception, take a look at some of the beautiful dessert bars event planner Amy Atlas has put together.
Laura Keller is a 20-something living in Baltimore, MD. Some of her favorite things include crafts, cooking, and culture, which she shares on her blog Radiator Tunes.