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Want to set up your very own popcorn bar at your next party? I set one up at my brother and sister in law’s bridal shower and everyone loved it. It also served as the “Thank You” favors for the party!
When I was trying to think of a favor for the bridal shower, I just couldn’t think of anything good. Well, that’s not true, I could think a ton but I couldn’t think of any that we could afford. haha
You see, we invited over 145 people to this bridal shower and even if we had found thank you favors for $1 it would have cost us well over $100 for favors for the shower. While I love Meghan a ton, I just didn’t have an extra $100 for thank you favors for the shower. haha
So I had already planned on having a popcorn bar at the shower as a surprise for Meghan but after thinking of what to make for favors, I thought that the popcorn bar would totally work for that too!
Meghan wanted a popcorn bar at their wedding but for one reason or another she decided that they would forgo the popcorn bar. So I made it happen for the bridal shower!
This is how I set ours up….
I picked three flavors for our popcorn bar:
- White Cheddar Popcorn
- Kettle Corn
- Butter Popcorn
The Butter Popcorn and Kettle Corn were just Orville Redenbacher boxes of popcorn that I popped in the microwave the morning of the shower.
For the white cheddar popcorn, I popped regular kernels of popcorn in my Whirley-Pop Stovetop Popcorn Popper and then sprinkled the popped kernels with white cheddar popcorn seasoning.
Then I sealed up the popcorn in plastic bags until it was party time!
For the popcorn baskets, I used three of these large large Bushel Baskets. However, those are huge baskets and I knew I didn’t want to pop THAT MUCH popcorn for the shower.
So Meghan’s dad had a great idea. He had some hoop cheese crates at the shop, so we turned those upside down, stuck them into the bushel baskets so that we didn’t have to fill them all the way up.
We filled up 3 large plastic bags with the popcorn and then sat the bags down into the bushel baskets at the party. After that I popped a few little silver scoops into the popcorn for easy serving!
I also wanted a little something extra with the popcorn bar, so I decided to put out some toppings!
Now everyone is going to be making their own personal popcorn bags so we might as well give them some toppings to go with that popcorn!
My mom use to eat M&Ms and popcorn when I was little so when I was thinking of toppings for the popcorn bar all I could think about was chocolate. haha.
I got a few little small rectangle bushel baskets and filled them with Reese Pieces, Mini Chocolate Chips and Mini M&Ms.
So since these are favors and people are going to want to take their treats home, they’ll need some bags.
In a little chicken wire basket, I laid out some white and brown paper bags with some twine for everyone to take their popcorn home.
I finished off the popcorn bar with a little sign that said “Thank You”, well and a little message letting everyone know to make their own little popcorn baggie.
Towards the end of the wedding shower everyone started to gather over by the popcorn bar and before I knew it they were filling their bags with popcorn and toppings!
Such a fun little favor table!
How would you set up your popcorn bar? Any different topping ideas?
How soon did you pop the popcorn? How soon do you think you could pop the popcorn before hand and keep in the plastic bag and it still be fresh.
I popped the popcorn the night before the event. You don’t want to do it too early though because you don’t want it to get stale.
I am planning to do this for a baby shower. Can you tell me approximately how much popcorn you estimated per person?
I think everyone took about a cup or so of popcorn home.
Where did you find the large plastic bags for the bushel baskets?
I got them from a local grocery store (they used them to line produce stands and I just asked for 3. However you could just giant Brining bags like for turkeys and such. (Or some companies call them giant oven bags. I just did a quick search on google and it looks like Walmart, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond and World Market sell them.
How much of each popcorn did you pop? And how many people ended up coming to the shower?
This shower was 2 years ago haha I don’t remember how many people came or how many bags we popped 🙂 Sorry but I do remember that the average party to-go bag was made with about 1 cup of popcorn and regular bags of popcorn have around 10 cups of popcorn in them once they are popped. 🙂