photo by Phillippo Photo- Indiana

April is here and wedding season is upon us! These days it’s not enough to just have a cake at your wedding, candy buffets are a must! Brides have been getting super creative with their dessert offerings and candy buffets are a fabulous, fun option to take care of even the biggest sweet tooth on your big day!

How to Create the Perfect Candy Buffet:

1. Pick a color scheme- This may seem obvious, but before you do anything you need to nail down your color scheme. For most, this will simply be your wedding colors, but sometimes you need to add a color to compliment your pop color (like the white in the pictures shown). I love focusing on shades of colors rather than being too matchy-matchy. This gives your candy buffet dimension and can even give you flavor variety!
2. Get your canisters- Now you need to figure out placement in your venue and the size of your table. This will help you get an idea of how many canisters you can fit. I ended up with room for seven canisters (all from Michaels) and took the pyramid approach. Symmetry is key! I bought one big canister for the middle and built the table out from there. Play with the set-up! I chose to keep my candy buffet simple, but you can do a big floral arrangement in the middle, your wedding cake or even a display of cupcakes. One last note on canisters, make sure it’s easy to get candy out of them for your guests, you want to make sure your guests spend more time dancing than in line for candy!
3. Pick your candies- This step is crucial. It can make or break a candy buffet. Let start with the variety. Even though I wish everything all the time was chocolate, you have to have variety for your guests. A few of the favorite candies from my wedding were taffy (people loved to just grab them out of the jar since they were wrapped), Sixlets (similar to M&M’s) and yogurt covered pretzels. I ended up getting most of my candy from Oh Nuts!, they have a huge variety and you can shop by color or flavor and can even schedule your delivery. It made shopping a breeze! Now for the big question, how much do you buy? I found this to be the hardest part of the candy buffet! There are a lot of guidelines out there about how many pounds/guest you should buy, but when I really started to think through it those guidelines are so arbitrary! Since it’s based on weight, one pound of yogurt covered pretzels is going to be much different than one pound of M&M’s. To solve for this, I created a simple spreadsheet to help visual what I was actually ordering. Check it out here! This spreadsheet really helped me decide if a candy was worth it from a cost perspective and if I would have enough candy per person to fill up my favor boxes!
4. Time for accessories!- Now it’s time to glam up that candy table! First you need favor bags/boxes. I ended up ordering my pink chinese takeout boxes pictured from Amazon, but there are a ton of options out there. When ordering candy, consider how large your favor bags will be. The bigger the bag, the more candy the guest is likely to take. Most people seem to fill it up to the brim! If you are opting for a bigger option like me, make sure to air on the more generous calculations of candy/person. You will also need scoops and/or tongs. Your catering company might provide these, but if not I found these great silver utensils from Party City. Just be mindful of the type of candy people need to get their hands on. I found for the candy I bought, I needed a mixture of scoops and tongs, and it doesn’t hurt to get extras! Now for the fun stuff, labels and decorations. I chose to keep mine simple with a matching tablecloth, a sparkly banner, homemade labels, some balloons and personalized napkins, but the sky is the limit here! Have fun with it, just don’t forget the essentials!

Creating your own candy buffet and have questions or do you just have ideas to share from doing your own candy buffet? Please share in the comments below! And for more candy buffet fun check out the blue candy buffet below we put together for my sister’s baby shower!