Wedding favours and Bomboniere…..The tradition

Favours or Bomboniere are the perfect way to say "thank you" to family and friends for sharing your special day. They can be given for many occasions, the most popular being Wedding, Birth, Baptism, First Holy Communion, Anniversaries and parties. They are considered one of the most important Wedding accessory needed to celebrate your big day and are well received by guests.

Wedding favours date back centuries and are considered traditional at Wedding receptions by many European countries such as France, Italy and Greece. In fact it has been said that couples have been giving favours to their guests since the Middle Ages. It wasn’t always the general society who offered Italian wedding favours to their guests, It was originally a luxury limited to the aristocracy and the wealthy, whose lavish offerings were intended to display the wealth and power of their family.

The French used to give "Bombonieres" to their guests. These were well presented boxes, normally made of crystal or porcelain and would contain Bombons

Favours or Bomboniere would range from something simple like a small porcelain figurine to something as elaborate as a silver frame or crystal vase. Today couples opt for more practical favours like bottle stoppers or perfume diffusers. No matter how simple or elaborate the favour, they are never given without confetti, which are sugar coated almonds, wrapped in a tulle and either tied to the favour or handed out separately. The confetti represents the bitter-sweet union of marriage. The number of confetti, is always an odd number & usually five, and symbolise fertility, happiness, health, longevity and wealth. Ribbons and flowers are used to decorate the bomboniera and attach the confetti to match the colour scheme of the day. Also traditionally you will always find a tag with the couple's names and Wedding date attached too.

Bomboniere are not just for Weddings, they are also given out at special occasions like Christening, First Holy Communion, Confirmation, Graduation, Anniversaries and Engagement. The confetti or sugared almonds come in a variety of colours which symbolise each event: white is used for wedding which is a symbol of purity, also for Communion and Confirmation, pink or blue for Christening or announcing the birth of a baby, red for graduation, emerald green for engagement and silver and gold for wedding anniversary.

From these beginnings of Italian Wedding favours when precious gifts were given along with the traditional 5 sugared almonds, At this particular time sugar was an extremely expensive commodity which was also widely believed to contain medicinal properties. These five almonds were offered to guests in little boxes, often along with other sweets of the time. The five almonds contained in the traditional Italian wedding favours came to be known as confetti.

Sugaring almonds is a very laborious process and can take a couple of days to complete. The almonds, are peeled, toasted and flavoured, then inside rotating containers, sugar solutions are sprayed inside them, which evaporate by leaving a uniform layer of sugar on the almond, thanks to the heating obtained by insufflation of hot air. The long production process involves repeated phases of wetting and drying, until the desired covering layer is obtained. After the coating phase, the sugared almonds have a rough and irregular surface and are then subjected to smoothing, colouring (if necessary) and finally polishing. If in the past this process was entrusted entirely to the skill and experience of the master confectioners, today the artisans, which are still indispensable, are joined by new technological equipment that allows you to keep under control all stages of processing, applying strict standards of times, humidity, temperature, quality controls, sanitary rules. The result is a product that guarantees unchanged quality characteristics, and always perfectly the same for taste, fragrance and colour, even if manufactured in different batches.

Nowadays the most famous confetti which are very well known by any Italian are Sulmona, Pelino and Avola (which are named after the regions they are produced in)

Nowadays Italian wedding favours have evolved to include many little gifts offered as keepsakes to guests who attend the wedding of a happy couple, perhaps something as simple as a bottle stopper, photo frame with a personalised tag or ribbon printed with the name and date of the wedding. Confectioners’ perfected the skill of dipping the best almonds into candied coatings which eventually developed into the brightly coloured sugared almonds we know of today as an integral part of Italian wedding favours. In Italy nowadays, guests are likely to leave a wedding after being presented with one of these bomboniere more often than not consisting of candied sugar almonds, almonds covered in chocolate or the vast array of flavoured almonds, consisting of well known desert and fruit flavours such as lemon or cheesecake as an acceptable variation on this charming theme.

Looking back at my childhood and growing up in an Italian family, we attended many Weddings in Italy and UK and the anticipation of "what will the bomboniera be?" was exciting and a highlight as a child. We would receive the box at the end of the evening, always tied with beautiful ribbons and adorned with colourful flowers, which held the mystery of what was inside. I always had the job of opening it once we got home, or rather no one else had a choice!

What are your experiences of favour giving? I would love to know.