10 Inspiring Dessert Table Ideas to Make Your Wedding Reception Unforgettable
Updated: Dec. 13, 2023
Add tasty flair to an elegant or rustic wedding reception with a dessert table that tantalizes guests while reflecting your unique personality.
Modern Farmhouse Chic
Tear a page from the Magnolia Home decorating handbook with a rustic dessert table featuring homemade tartlets, cupcakes and parfaits among other charming treats.
Berry Tempting
Show your colorful personality with berries galore, from beautiful berry tarts to strawberries dipped in chocolate or candy coating colored to match your wedding hues.
Doughnuts Delight
Grab-and-go doughnuts and doughnut holes can be the perfect sweet treat for a morning wedding or a late-night reception. Stack them up, nest them in a tray or hang them on the wall for a gravity-defying display.
A Little Bit Country
Use wooden boxes to display pies and other treats made from your family’s heirloom recipes to add just the right flair for your country wedding style.
For the Love of Chocolate
What could be more romantic than a dessert table of chocolates? Include homemade chocolate-mint bark or any of these chocolate candy treats.
Dreaming in Pastels
No matter what the season, romance will be in full bloom with a pastel-colored candy bar. Add pretzels covered in white chocolate for a salty-sweet combination, or pastel almond bark.
Captivating Cakes
Who says you should have only one wedding cake? We say, the more the merrier. That way, you won’t have to settle on one flavor or style, either. Think ganache-draped chocolate cake, Victoria sponge layered with berries, butter cake with lemon curd filling…whatever you like!
Spring Is in the Air
Team up with your florist to surround a variety of cupcakes, tarts and this cherry angel trifle with flowers to create a garden-wedding dessert theme.
Everything on a Stick
No utensils (or plates!) needed when dessert comes on a stick. Fill a table with chocolate-dunked goodies like Rice Krispies bars and caramel apples. Or have a chocolate fountain with dippers like fruit skewers, bite-size brownies and soft pretzels (for that delectable salty-sweet combo). And if chocolate brown doesn’t fit your wedding palette, choose a different hue.
Drink Your Dessert
Sure, there’s a bar, but we’re talking about a treat on the sweeter side. For a winter wedding, how about a hot chocolate bar? In the summertime, guests could make their own milk shakes. (Your caterer provides a big batch of vanilla shakes, friends and family mix in the flavorings.) S’mores, anyone?
