Wedding cookie tables survive generations
Photo courtesy of Laura Magone
For her August wedding, Krystina Robinson designed the Kennywood “Marry Go Round” and made the cookies in the shape of the amusement park’s iconic Golden Nugget ice cream cones.
Photo courtesy of Laura Magone
The cookie table at the wedding of Krystina Robinson and Simon La Marchant included the ever-popular Italian peach and strawberry cookies.
Photo courtesy of Laura Magone
Bride Krystina Robinson, a graphic designer, prepared a Pittsburgh cookie table sign to explain the tradition to those who might not be familiar with it.
Laura Magone
Photo courtesy of Laura Magone
Apricot kolache cookies at the August wedding of Krystina Robinson, formerly of Belle Vernon, and Simon La Marchant
Designers of wedding cookie tables that are uniquely popular in the greater Pittsburgh area disagree over whether or not the chocolate chip is worthy of guests of the bride and groom.
It’s the biggest controversy among Facebook’s The Wedding Cookie Table Community page that was created by Monongahela native Laura Magone and quickly snowballed into having more than 9,000 followers.
“People will get into arguments over whether or not it belongs on the table because it’s too common,” Magone said.
She decided to work on a documentary and cookbook on the topic after noticing about a decade ago how much time and effort had gone into creating a cookie table for a wedding she was photographing.
“I thought, ‘There is something to this,'” she said.
Her projects led her to create the Facebook page that has become a popular place for its members to network recipes or suggestions on ways to improve them.
“Most of my nut rolls are splitting. What am I doing wrong” Please help!!!” a member wrote in a comment last month.
Another member was quick to suggest that she was putting too much filling in her nut rolls, and that apparently solved that baking dilemma.
It didn’t take long, either, before “the Facebook thing was clambering to have” a face-to-face meeting of its members, Magone said.
That led to the group hosting a one-day conference that attracted more than 325 people Nov. 11 to the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in North Strabane Township, where there were cookie demonstrations and hundreds of cookies arranged on tables in a wave-design pattern. The money raised at the event has been set aside by the Monongahela Area Historical Society, which will use it to fund another cookie event in August 2019, Magone said.
It’s not known exactly when the wedding cookie table came to life in this region or why they remain a popular tradition to this day, pretty much exclusive to the Youngstown, Ohio, West Virginia Panhandle and Pittsburgh areas.
Magone said people who lived in coal patch towns were known to bring cookies to weddings in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“It was a unique combination of things involving sense of community, ethnic pride and the ability to support and help each other,” she said. “My mom’s social media network can be found in her recipe box.”
These tables seem to have increased in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s at fire hall wedding receptions when relatives of the couple prepared most if not all food for newlyweds, many of whom did not have a lot of money to start their lives.
Many new brides no longer want the bridal dance, also knowns as a money dance, at their receptions, but they still desire homemade cookies, even in high-class settings, Magone said.
“It was never orchestrated like it is now,” Magone said.
Heather McDowell, private events director at the posh Southpointe Golf Club in Cecil Township, said the location of the cookie table is the first thing wedding guests ask at the door to receptions.
“It’s not where is the bathroom, it’s where is the cookie table,” McDowell said.
“It’s almost a photo op,” she said, as people go out of their way to arrange them in tiers.
“The just keep outdoing each other,” she said. “It’s definitely a staple in Pittsburgh. It is never going out of style.”
Jessica Garda, a wedding planner in Washington, said she never heard about cookie tables, having grown up in northern Virginia. Garda said she opted not to have a cookie table at her own wedding in 2014.
“It was the biggest controversy, said Garda, who owns Jessica Garda Events and has planned weddings in Pittsburgh, Washington and Wheeling, W.Va.
“People are serious about the cookie table,” she said. “It’s not something to mess with.”