This week we’ll be shifting gears a bit. Instead of the promised bridal shower convo, I decided we’ll be talking Dessert Bars. I’ve had a few clients in the past 2 weeks ask me about these so I’d thought I’d share.
The great part of designing your wedding is that there are so many ways to make it personal. From your centerpieces, to place cards, and now to dessert bars – anything can become a perfect opportunity to add details. Dessert bars are an excellent place to play with patterns, textures, visual levels, and most importantly spotlighting the delicious goods.
The first step to designing a fantastic dessert bar (or candy bar or even a cocktail bar) is to figure out exactly what you’ll be serving. You want to make sure that the containers you use to display the items are appropriate (e.g. a cupcake stand for cheesecake? I don’t think so.).
The second step is to make sure you create visual levels. If your cupcakes are sitting in the back and are not elevated, your guests will miss them and the dessert bar will lose the whole effect.
The third step is to think about serving dishes/containers/utensils. I recently did a wedding where Chinese takeout boxes were used as the containers for the dessert bar. This served two purposes – a container on site AND a way for guests to take some goodies home with them.
The final step is incorporating your colors. A great way to do this is getting a patterned linen using your colors. The containers can also be a great way to bring the pops of colors (or napkins and straws). Or how about candy? Think about an apothecary jar filled with bright blue gum balls!
Below is a dessert bar I recently designed. The talented ladies of Paired Images shot the display and all the printed material was provided by Carina (invitation genius) of Little Bird Creative. Because this dessert bar was placed outside I incorporated lots of glass (to reflect the sunlight). I used a solid black shelving unit to display all the goodies, automatically creating levels. We included labels for each dessert, allowing guests to grab exactly what they want (printed material is a fabulous way to add detail without significantly adding to your budget). Check out the results below!
And if you’re unsure how to design your Dessert Bar, we’d be happy to help!
