Before the Mane Event: Assemble!

Approximately 85% of our final guest list was traveling to Atlanta from elsewhere.  Some folks even came from overseas.  The least we could do is make them feel welcome in Atlanta with some OOT bags.  Y'all sent over tons of fabulous ideas, but I ran out of time chose to create a grocery-themed bag.  I figured a bag of groceries would make me feel at home, so why not?

We began our OOT bag assembly with a few dozen Trader Joe's reusable bags.

The bags were Atlanta-themed in design, so we decided to fill them with Atlanta-themed groceries!  I was able to buy local pecans and peanuts from the Dekalb Farmer's Market for a pretty reasonable price.  We bought in bulk, so we divided the ridiculous amount of snacks among lots of small gift bags.  Each OOT bag got a small bag of peanuts and a small bag of pecans.  Lion Corgi was very confused as to why there were mixed nuts spread all over her living room.

Please ignore the disaster that is in the background of that last picture.  Mr. Lion was working on our chuppah, and we don't have a garage.  Don't worry, that post is on its way!

Remember the cards we ordered via iPhoto to personalize our OOT bags?  They turned out great!

{image by Evan Hampton / via Weddings by Evan Hampton}

Since Apple's iPhoto lets you print on both sides, we decided to fill the reverse side with fun places to go.  The only problem was that we had a very limited amount of space.  So, we stuck to the bare necessities: Chick-Fil-A, Starbucks, and places to watch the NCAA Men's Basketball Semi-finals.

We punched a hole in the corner of the card.  Then, we tied it to the grocery bag with some baker's twine.

We really wanted to include some peaches among our groceries, but they were nowhere to be found.  Peaches apparently do not grow in Georgia in late March.  At first, I was disappointed that the fruit behind our state's nickname was totally unavailable.  How could we have an OOT bag based on The Peach State without any peaches?!  After about the fourth grocery store, I got over it.

We may not have had the most important Georgia food item, but we were able to get our hands on the most important Atlanta food item...Coca Cola!  We bought a couple of cases of Mexican Coke (also known as Kosher Coke) at Sam's Club.  These sodas are made with cane sugar, rather than corn syrup, and they taste magical.  I recently learned that this is similar to a Dublin Dr. Pepper...something I'll definitely need to try some day!  Anyway, the bottle was glass and vintage-looking, and the label was in Spanish.  They were a big hit.

Spoiler alert: the Coke may have made an appearance later in our wedding...

{image by Evan Hampton / via Weddings by Evan Hampton}

What did you end up putting in your OOT bags?  Was it similar to what you had initially planned to include?

Love is Sweet

You guessed it; this post is about our candy buffet!  When we first decided to do a candy buffet as favors for our guests, we looked into the catered options.  There are plenty of convenient options out there...but they were WAY out of our budget.  We decided to put it together on our own.  The problem was that we didn't know where to start!

I searched the internet far and wide to gather information to help build our candy buffet.  Honestly, this community is the best resource I found.  Still, it was hard to find all of the information we needed in one place.  I needed to consider volume, weight, number of guests, colors, and local resources.  So, here's a little breakdown of what I learned:

• There is a fabulous website called Candy Warehouse that sells wholesale candy.  The site is organized by color, so it's really easy to coordinate candy to match your wedding.  Since the candy is sold wholesale, it's significantly cheaper per pound.  The downside is that most candy comes in 5 or 10-pound bags.  Now, if you're doing M&Ms or Jelly Bellys, that's pretty good!  If you're doing gummy bears, that's a VERY large bag.  The other downside is that you're ordering online, which means you have to pay for shipping.  If one kind of candy is sold in 10-pound bags, and you're doing a buffet so you're probably going to have several types of candy, that's a pretty heavy package.  The shipping will most likely end up costing you more than the candy itself.
• If you're looking for a place to buy in person (i.e. skip the shipping costs), Fuzziwig's Candy Factory, also known as Sweets from Heaven, is among the best.  It's a nationwide candy store, found in local malls.  It came highly recommended from a few friends and a few Hive members, so I decided to check it out.  The employees were very familiar with the concept of a candy buffet, and told us that they had helped pick out candy for many other couples.  They were very helpful and definitely helped us get the most for our dollar.  Candy cost approximately $10/pound.
• Everything I read said that you want to buy about 3 pounds per guest for your buffet to look full.  I disagree.  The best advice I can give is to consider volume, not weight.  We ended up going with about 0.25 pounds per guest, and I feel like it'll be enough.  I mean, that's how much a hamburger weighs!
• Finally, I learned that it's important to do a dry run!  Allow me to walk you through the process...

I already had all of our containers, as I had been collecting them over the last year or so.  I spread them out over our coffee table.

Lion Corgi did not understand why a bunch of glass was so interesting.

Then, I brought in my 20-pound bag of candy.

I should probably mention that we have no chocolate in our candy buffet.  I know, right?  It's crazy!  But gummies were the cheapest, and we splurged on some jelly beans.  M&Ms were out of the question.

I wanted to fill the vases up with the candy, but I didn't want the vases to get all sticky.  Cleaning that many vases seemed like something I did not want to do more than once.  So, I left the gummy candy in the bags and eyeballed it.  I set up our little sign, and I filled the narrow bottles with pinwheels that I had purchased from Etsy.

The total for the vases and the candy came to about $250.  Divided by 120ish guests?  I feel like $2 per guest is pretty good for favors!  And honestly, I don't even miss the chocolate!  It's colorful and it's full of sugar.  What's not to like?!

Are you doing a candy buffet?  What tricks did you learn when planning yours?