Wedding Cookies – not just a few!

14th July, 2010. By Raylene Boots

At most weddings in Western Pennsylvania, it is expected there will be a cookie table. Not a dinky, little cookie table either. I am talking a loaded down, expansive, jaw-dropping cookie table. Folks from outside our area just don’t get it. But we “yinzers” know what a cookie table is expected to be, and I have certainly seen my share of them. Some of them have been quite memorable.

It is hard to surprise me when it comes to weddings. But when Todd and Tammy C. held their reception at the Center in New Castle, there were several things that impressed me. Tammy wished for chair covers but the Center didn’t have them- so her mom made them for her – hundreds of them! The hall was transformed into something new – and I was impressed. The top of the cake, I was told, had been purchased by Tammy as a young girl – this was certainly unique. But what really awed me was the cookie table. It had to be eighty feet long and was covered with over 800 dozen – I said 800 DOZEN – cookies of all shapes, sizes, and colors. How do I know exactly how many cookies there were? I was so awed that I actually had to ask – HOW MANY COOKIES ARE THERE?? Those aunts (and surely many others) must have been baking for months.

Another remarkable cookie table was at the wedding of Rebecca and Scott F. The main room at the Cathedral had a beautiful cookie table with hundreds of dozens of cookies. What made this unique was that all the cookies on the table in the main room were light-colored pastel. All of the dark cookies were on a different table in the next room. This was remarkable, a beautiful tribute to both the bride and groom – the dark cookies were accompanied by the groom’s cake, the light cookies were accompanied by the white wedding cake.

The cookie table is often a labor of love by the relatives of the bride and groom. Traditionally, it is the aunts who toil for months before the wedding to showcase their best baking skills on the cookie table. Rule of thumb is one dozen cookies per guest – start baking now! And when you next attend a wedding in Western Pennsylvania – appreciate our regional tradition and take some cookies home!

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