Dessert is a way of life at Jubilee Events, so getting to explore the various sweets to offer guests is a treat — pun entirely intended! For Nicole and Mark’s wedding cake, it was a must to embellish the colorful, whimsical aesthetic of their wedding design, so we enlisted the talents of Sarah and Simon Cake Design! To see how their full design came together, take a peek here.

The Cake

Nicole and Mark’s main confection was the perfect complement to the scope of the day and provided some serious eye candy for all guests and vendors alike! Like the rest of the wedding design, each tier was packed with bursts of colorful bubbles and petals traveling down the sides. Each tier was a mixture of flavors like lemon on lemon!

photos: emily kirke photography

Sweet Details

No dessert display is complete without its sweet counterparts. Remember the Love Cats from our stationery suite? They made another guest appearance as the cookies. Sarah and Simon completely blew us all away with the detail on each cookie. It made it almost too hard to eat. Almost! We couldn’t think of a more perfect nod to our couple’s story together than to have a Cookie cookie!

In addition, guests snacked on rainbow mousse, colorful macarons, marshmallows, and tri-colored donut holes. We were in heaven!

We couldn’t be more grateful to have Sarah and Simon’s talents as part of the day! Having a history in art and design brings about the most detailed and eye-catching confections you’ll ever come across. Get lost in her story and more of her work on her site! Whether abstract, colorful, traditional or clean, it can all be done!

Thank you, Sarah, for your amazing cake and cookies! We still smile every time we come across these sweet images! XO

Let’s face it, food is fun and it is one of the most memorable aspects of your event. Brides are now looking for more ways to make the day reflective of their individual style and what guests eat is becoming one of the first places they look to do this. It is also an element that you are going to be including in your budget, so you should work with your caterer and confection designer to go a step above the expected. Build your menu as mini pieces of art-be creative! This can start with something as simple as the custom packaging of your treats down to the tray they are held on.

Custom Packaging:

Why not add a little extra flavor to your hors d’oeuvres and favors by wrapping up a late night snack in a personally stamped bag? Place a monogram from your invitation on a paper bag that hold hot cut French fries at the end of the evening. Go a step further and have a small bag stamped with the evening’s menu and sneak in a fresh baguette to go with dinner.

Pairing Your Favorites:

What’s not to love? Mini is a fun trend right now and guests would love a small bottle of your favorite libation to compliment a flavorful snack. Have a mini vanilla bourbon milkshake and cheeseburger slider to toast the night, or for a little more excitement, treat your attendants to a miniaturized Patron bottle and crisp fish taco. I’ll cheers to that!

Color Coordination:

Nothing warms my heart more than a display of French macaroons and cupcakes that compliment the party’s color scheme. Look to a food’s natural color for inspiration, but don’t be limited by this. Invite your guests to expect the unexpected! For a girls’ night, feature pink jello shots topped with gold sprinkles. It’s fun filled and glamorous!

Displays:

Cocktail hour can be neglected since it’s such a small portion of the reception. Still, you will be including fare for all to enjoy and this is an area to have fun. Start with something basic: you are going to have a bar at your event full of your favorite spirits, but instead of leaving your guests in a line, feature a tailgate for everyone to help themselves. This leaves room for your guests to interact and enjoy your venue.

Think of a way to display your selections that would spark some interest amongst your guests. A tray that passes through the crowd doesn’t give everyone enough time to enjoy the array, only the taste. Featuring shelving units that display your mini caprese salads, macaroni and cheese bites, and tomato soup shooters allows everyone to experience what night has to offer. It also leaves them talking about your event for months!

XOXO!

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of working with a lot of my absolute favorite people on a photoshoot with Carla Ten Eyck for her September Ten Eyck Tuesday. I collaborated with Elisabeth of BLUSH floral design and Beth Chapman of White Dress by the Shore to come up with a unique and fun color story in teals and pinks. All the hair and makeup was done by the talented and super amazing Dana Bartone & Co., who are responsible for making almost ALL of my brides gorgeous on their wedding day (me included)!! My studio roomie Thomas Morlock of Vantage Point Films also shot the entire event from his viewfinder. Plus, he drank all the champagne.

For those of you who don’t know, Carla runs an amazing workshop for photographers once a month where she spends an entire day shooting, educating, and discussing her artform. I’ve attended two Ten Eyck Tuesdays and Carla is amazing!! If you are a photographer in the area (you should travel here if your not!) I highly recommend Carla’s workshop. They are so thorough and detailed. Plus, Carla puts the sass in sass-a-frass.

The location for the shoot was really awesome. The building is an interior designer’s dream, full of lots of shops from furniture to lighting. We took over a blank industrial space with nothing except a few sheets of unused drywall laid up against the wall.

This gorgeousness is all courtesy of Carla and Beth Chapman of White Dress by the Shore who dressed and styled our gorgeous models. Don’t you just LOVE this short wedding gown and feather hair fascinator? It was so delicate and pretty in person! I could have played dress up for hours with all the amazing accessories Beth brought.

That gorgeous, vintage pink bouquet is by the equally talented Elisabeth of BLUSH floral design. I love Dan’s peacock feathered boutonniere. Can you see the peacock feathers tucked into Mandie’s bouquet? Check the neck collage of images!

Pretty gorgeous, right? The furniture is from my FAVORITE rental company, Signature Event Rentals, who are responsible for most of the awesomeness you see. That gorgeous white couch? The clear-backed and hot pink dining chairs?! The leather tufted wall panels?!?! The WHITE dinning table?!?!?! Yeah, they pretty much rule. They’re the best, hands down, and we LOVED having their furniture at the shoot!

Elisabeth created a bed of tightly arranged hot pink carnations for our escort cards, which were pennant flags that I made and hand wrote in gold ink. Antonia from Flower upon Flour blew us away with her tasty little gold petit fours with the hot pink fleur de lis… but the pièce de résistance was definitely her INSANE cake!!

Antonia and I had discussed the color story and inspiration behind the shoot… and when she showed up with this…. we were like… seriously?! A teal cake with a gold birdcage on top and hot pink feathers?!

…. up next, our table and some other fun stuff!

xoxo

Recently I was introduced to a new company called Raise the Cake, which creates fabulous custom cake stands. Started by wedding planner Kathy Jo Peterson, Raise the Cake takes the embellishment of the cake stand to an entirely new level. I love how customizable the options are and how versatile the cake stands can be. They have a super sweet and pretty website with all the deets on how to get one of these gorgeous cake stands for your wedding. Go visit!