How to Personalize Your Wedding Food and Dessert

"Concocted cocktails are very important to people. We allow the brides and grooms to actually do a tasting with our mixologist to design these cocktails, so it makes it more of their own. The darker liquors, the bourbons, the whiskeys, those are all coming into play after dinner. People are wanting to have a great bourbon, a great whiskey after dinner, and then go right outside on our outdoor veranda terrace and smoke a cigar."

"Pulling in different cuisines that are important to the family. I had a wedding recently where we designed the menu based on a cookbook that the father of the bride gave us because he cooked from that. It was a Mediterranean cookbook because they had traveled the world and they loved that area. So we pulled in flavors that would create this amazing family-style dinner that the father guided us with."

"A bride and groom got married, and their favorite dessert is Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It was a surprise to all of the guests. The bride actually had performed a song on piano in the ballroom, and we moved the piano out into the prefunction space, and we layered atop the piano these great double boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and had the hats there, and people were walking around with the hats on. It was just a great way to surprise their guests because they knew it was something important to the bride and groom."

"This bride had a very dessert-oriented family, and the bride absolutely loved chocolate chip cookies. So at the end of the meal, we had presented to each table warm chocolate chip cookies, and everyone in that room, since it's such a dessert family, everybody knew that this was something that the bride would love and was very reflective of her style and what she wanted."

"The favors might be a little food item that people can eat, or I put boxes of cake or cupcakes or cookies on a table, so as guests are exiting, there's a note from the bride and groom that I actually have the bride and groom sign that says, 'Please enjoy your evening. Thank you for joining us and sweet dreams,' or something. Just putting little touches like that where an extension of the way the bride or the family may be entertaining in their home or when they do entertain. The little touches make people feel welcome."