Thinking Beyond the Cake

Happy almost Valentine's Day! I can't stop thinking about sweets this week. There are so many cute and creative ways to tie your favorite confections into your wedding day. From the get-go my fiance and I liked the idea of doing something different from the traditional wedding cake.

Source: left, right

Milk and cookies. Yum.

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I love what this couple did - instead of having a wedding cake, they had a wedding cake-shaped piñata and then did a french croquembouche for dessert - that translates to 'crunch in the mouth'!

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Macaroons are adorable and come in endless colors and flavors.

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Donuts - always a crowd-pleaser.

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And you can't go wrong with ice cream. I'm actually eating some raspberry sorbet as I type this right now :-)

Did you decide to forgo the wedding cake? What are you going to do instead?

Backyard Wedding Cuisine

The heat has me all obsessed with backyard weddings, spring and summer themes, and some really creative foods! Mix it all into one and I have created a full menu for your backyard wedding affair. Quite honestly, this would be perfect for a bridal shower or engagement party as well. Keeping with the causal theme of the backyard affair, this menu is simple, easy, and pretty darn colorful.

My favorite way to display fruit has to be on a stick in the form of a kabob, or in those cute little balls. I love the creativity of these fruit displays so so much. I definitely wish I had thought about this before my own engagement party!

Source: Intimate Weddings

Always a hit, mason jars and spouted jars with colorful and fun drink choices! LOVE LOVE LOVE.

Depending on the formality of your wedding, these are the perfect solution to a dinner. I love kabobs and all the choices you have with ingredients, but on top of that, the clean up is virtually none. If you are planning on making your own food for your wedding, and I know some of you really are, then this is a great idea for dinner. So simple, and so yummy!

Source: Culinary.net, Country Living

Yummy Yummy ice cream. Now, on an extremely hot summer day, ice cream is the perfect solution. You may not be willing to let the tradition of the wedding cake go, I certainly am not, but as an alternative, or along with the cake, ice cream can be a really fun way to cool down the guests and offer a little something else.

I'm still completely indecisive about the venue and the type of wedding I really want to do, so I am just looking over my options a bit to see how I really would do things and how I could create a really fun and amazing wedding with certain types of venues! I'll probably have more to come as I sort through all the different styles of venues until I can pick the one that I love the most for my wedding!

Who knew venue hunting would be this hard in Northern CA???