Wedding Wednesday: Sweets for the Sweets

Can you believe that we last discussed cake in August?  But I have been thinking a lot about dessert lately - this was made the other weekend, and it was mind-bendingly delicious - and it's time to catch you up.

When Jon and I were in Suffolk in September, we made an appointment with a local wedding cake lady for Sunday afternoon; unfortunately, she emailed me late the day before to tell me that she had a family emergency and needed to reschedule.  I replied right away saying that I understood and would be happy to have a further conversation when things settled down on her end.  Given that corresponding with this woman in the weeks leading up to our appointment was like pulling teeth, I wasn't too surprised to never hear from her again.

Happily, though, Jon's mother had a solution up her sleeve.  There was a cake shop in a nearby town - why didn't I call them to see if they could squeeze me in?  So I rang up Vanilla Patisserie, with only a hint of panic in my voice, and managed to arrange an appointment for Monday morning.

Michelle, the owner, was great, and we had a fantastic (and delicious) meeting.  I'll write more about it - and about the cake - later, but first I want to tell you about the decadent dessert buffet we're creating!

via

Actually, even before that, I'm going to share a conversation I had with our wonderful caterers about this.  Helen and Justin had sent me a few possible menus that all included dessert, and when I signed with them it was with the understanding that they'd provide (and I'd pay for) three courses.  Because I really respect their expertise and professionalism and because they've been so lovely to work with on a personal level, I wanted to check with them about hiring someone else to handle dessert - the last thing I wanted was to step on their toes.  But Helen was very happy for me to talk to someone who specializes in sweets about doing our whole buffet, and I'm enormously grateful because it means that Michelle and Jon and I are able to be really creative!

We'll have our formal (but unfussy) wedding cake, of course, but we're still set on not including a seated and plated dessert course.  Instead, we'll set up a bar of treats so that our guests can help themselves throughout the party bit of the evening.  We want to offer lots of options in terms of flavors and textures and things and we're still working out all of the finer details, but here are the kinds of sweets we're liking:

[ lemon cupcakes / raspberry bars / double chocolate cookies /  carrot cake whoopie pies ]

In case you were concerned, we are absolutely still hoping to provide a cheese cake - though this is very much exchange-rate dependent.  But the dessert buffet is definitely happening, so I want to hear from you, dear readers.  Did you have lots of sweets at your wedding?  What should we watch out for - any sure successes and/or disasters in the making?

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