New York based wedding planner and caterer Andrea Correale of Elegant Affairs was kind enough to talk to us about wedding trends for 2008.
Elegant Affairs Caterers is a 5-Star, full-service catering company that has been catering to social and corporate clientele of Manhattan, Long Island and the Hamptons for the last decade. Andrea has extensive experience planning all types of weddings from the simple affairs to the most lavish galas.
Here are some tips and trends from Andrea and Elegant Affairs Caterers:
What’s In & What’s Out
Round tables for reception seating is out and a combination of square, rectangle, and round tables are in.
Symmetrical floral centerpieces are out and varying size and shape floral centerpieces are in (different vases and vessels used at each reception table).
All white weddings are out. Chocolate brown accented with either pale blue, celadon, or pale orange is the hot color combination for 2008.
Fried food and heavy entrees are out. Lighter fare, organic cuisine, and vegetarian cuisine are definitely in.
Gift Trends
Many brides are requesting that a donation be given to their charity of choice in lieu of wedding gift.
For bridesmaids gifts, it’s a great gesture to take the girls for a spa treatment, or manicures and pedicures followed by a ladies lunch catered at the spa or at a local restaurant.
Using an online photo shop, create personalized photo books of memories throughout the years. Try shutterfly.com to get some great ideas.
Wedding Cake Trends
Round cakes are out and square cakes are in.
The days of the white cake are over. Brides are opting for cakes with bold colors and abstract shapes.
I was surfing the web for awesome wedding ideas, and looky looky what I found. I guess you can make any wedding an original.
Adam posted pictures of his and his bride’s Mii cake toppers (see below) stationed appropriately in front of their gorgeous ivy cake. They even made sure they had a console cake ready for Adam’s son! Way to be creative!
I’m not quite sure where they got their fantastic idea. It could have been from Martha Stewart’s Wii cake on the cover of Wired Magazine. While Martha made a console cake that stood on it’s side, she didn’t have any Miis in site, and her cake wasn’t actually edible. Such a shame.
Whether you like the console lying on it’s side, or standing up, if you’re a Wii-fanatic, this is an idea that’s perfect for you! Just be sure to make sure your Miis have smiles on their faces! It is, after all, your wedding day!
A recent trend in wedding cakes is the cupcake wedding cake. Instead of a fancy, expensive multi-tiered wedding cakes, many couples are opting for cupcakes arranged in the shape of a cake. This is a much more affordable alternative to a traditional wedding cake.
Your guests, young and old, will enjoy the cupcakes at your reception. What’s fun is that you can get the cupcakes in a variety of flavors.
If you’d like, you can still have a smaller, separate one tier cake used to do the cake cutting ceremony.
What do you think about cupcake wedding cakes? Good idea, or just tacky?
There’s one thing you can’t (and I mean CAN’T) go without on your big day: your wedding cake. It’s the one thing that is typical of every wedding, and yet, there are so many options out there that it’s hard to know where to begin!
Personally, I just went with the flow when it came to my cake. I had heard of this incredibly smooth icing option called fondant, and I let my mother-in-law design an absolutely gorgeous beach-themed, seashell accented wedding cake for my reception. I have absolutely no regrets because my cake was undeniably beautiful, but I certainly wouldn’t have minded if it had tasted just a little bit better. (As it turns out, fondant is a very, VERY gummy type of icing.)
Well, there are definitely a lot of different ways to approach the big wedding cake decision: tasting, reading, comparing, tasting again, but wouldn’t it be nice if you had a little nudge in the right direction to get you started? I thought so.
Well, just so you have a starting point, I thought I’d provide a very nice chart I found that breaks down your many, many icing options, and their various features like flavor, consistency, coloring, etc. Check out this link to the Wilton website to have a look and learn a little bit about your icing options before you make your (littler) big decision!
Last night, I was looking through a bunch of videos on VideoJug. If you don’t know about VideoJug, it’s sort of like YouTube but the videos are more professional.
Anyway … they have a big collection of wedding planning videos and one that I found to be very comprehensive was about how to choose your wedding cake. The video demonstrates all the steps you need to take to select a wedding cake that reflects your own wedding style and taste.
Choosing your wedding cake is one of the more fun parts about planning your wedding. You get to visit a bunch of bakeries and get treated like a queen, while sampling tons of delicious cake. Even the groom likes this part of wedding planning!
Check out the video when you have a chance and let me know what you think.
I saw this picture and was completely dumb-founded. A Wedding Cake created to look like a person – the Bride no less! Don’t get me wrong, the cake looks great and I am sure it is a close resemblance, took a lot of time and effort to create and all, but I just don’t think I can wrap my mind around eating a cake that looks like someone. It just seems creepy.
Still, if you want something truly unique and unusual at your wedding reception, this certainly fits the bill. Can you imagine all the jokes being blurted out as the Bride and Groom cut their cake? And just where would you start cutting; at her head or neck or back or where?
Let’s hope the actual cake part wasn’t something like Red Velvet cake – yuck!
Did you think your wedding cake was expensive? Listen to this; Mimi So Jewelers teamed up with cake designer Nahid La Patisserie Artisitique to create the world’s most expensive cake baking in at $20 million dollars. This cake contained many unique items including diamonds and was displayed at the Luxury Brands Bridal Show in Beverly Hills on October 22, 2006.
I couldn’t imagine eating a cake that was once a home for diamonds. To be honest, the cake doesn’t even look very attractive. In my opinion, the cake is way too cluttered and has too many things going on. What do you think?
I was surfing the web for awesome wedding ideas, and 
Everybody loves cupcakes! 
There’s one thing you can’t (and I mean CAN’T) go without on your big day: your wedding cake. It’s the one thing that is typical of every wedding, and yet, there are so many options out there that it’s hard to know where to begin!
Last night, I was looking through a bunch of videos on 
I saw this picture and was completely dumb-founded. A Wedding Cake created to look like a person – the Bride no less! Don’t get me wrong, the cake looks great and I am sure it is a close resemblance, took a lot of time and effort to create and all, but I just don’t think I can wrap my mind around eating a cake that looks like someone. It just seems creepy.