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?