To welcome your out-of-town wedding guests to their hotel rooms, you’ll undoubtedly want to surprise them with a fabulous welcome basket. The ‘usual’ items in a wedding color-themed gift bag or personalized tote have been water bottles, home-baked cookies or bakery-bought wedding-themed cookies, bags of chips, maybe a scented hand lotion – basically, a mix of stuff that guests pick through for their downtime snacking and pampering use.

Now, a new twist on the DIY snack pack gives guests a completely different experience: A picnic basket filled by your hotel with a charcuterie platter, a bread and cheese platter with berries and some bubbly — seen here at the Virginia Hotel in Cape May – lets your wedding guests enjoy a spontaneous romantic picnic for two. They might sit on their hotel’s terrace, or on their own room’s terrace, or in the gardens, to feast on your highly gourmet picnic basket treats and sip some champagne…finding this so much more elegant and upscale than a bag of packaged cookies and discount store water bottles. Your guests who fought traffic, or dealt with airline travel headaches, will be so impressed by and grateful for your welcome basket.

Photos by The Virginia Hotel