Ice cream instead of wedding cake? It might seem like the happy couple has gone rogue. But with the rise of gluten-free desserts and looser wedding parameters, the frozen dessert is becoming a more popular choice.
“We’ve definitely seen an increase in wedding requests,” says Beckie Jacobs, owner of Serendipity Homemade Ice Cream in Webster Groves. “Brides are exploring all types of alternative options—they don’t feel locked into a particular formula for weddings anymore.”
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Jacobs works with couples to pick out flavors that represent their wedding themes and complement the color schemes. The most popular flavors requested from Serendipity for weddings: chocolate, gooey butter cake, salty caramel, and vanilla.
At Clementine’s Naughty and Nice Creamery, the new ice cream shop in Lafayette Square, owner Tamara Keefe also caters to wedding parties. “We’ll provide the whole bridal set up,” she says. “We scoop right out of our own ice-cream bike, called ‘Spokes and Spoons,’ or our ice cream cart, or at a display table.”
Clementine’s also offers customized ice-cream flavors. “I recently did a wedding where the groom was from India. I found this Indian dessert called gulab jabun—sort of like a sugar doughnut—and I was able to make ice cream out of it,” Keefe says. “It’s just really fun to do things differently since I have the capability to make something unique from scratch.”
Keefe, who developed a proprietary method for freezing alcoholic beverages while maintaining the depth of the original taste, offers a line of “naughty” ice creams infused with various beer and cocktail flavors.
“For weddings, the dads will always insist on the maple bourbon flavor,” Keefe says. “Typically, ice cream sells more to women and kids, but with our naughty flavors, men will come in all the time.”
As for brides who want to have their cake and eat ice cream, too? Both Serendipity and Clementine’s offer ice cream bon-bons, scoops covered in hard-shell chocolate—perfect for pairing with a small cake.
