Confetti. Italian tradition for wedding favors.

The better Italian tradition for wedding favors is sugar coated almonds presented in a box or in a multilayer tulle bag tied with a ribbon. The etiquette wants the confetti to be packaged in a small bag of tulle or lace, in some occasion calling the dress of the bride, and in which there is a card with the name of the bride and groom, without the surnames, and the date of marriage.
The confetti represents an essential part of the « bomboniera » (favor) and in the old Italian tradition the five almonds represent a very specific meaning. In fact in Italy, five sugar coated almonds are typically handed out to guests representing health, wealth, cheerfulness, fertility and long life and, at the same time, reminding us that life is both bitter and sweet.
The last idea of life both bitter and sweet is reminded also with the wedding vow formula of “for better or worse.”
In all Italian weddings a table full of confetti of every kind and every taste contains in itself all a magical symbolism handed down from generation to generation for centuries.
Confetti, as know in all italian regions, are plain almonds coated in a sugar candy and they are originals from a little southern Italian town called Sulmona, a city in the province of L’Aquila, in Abruzzo, which holds paternity for its long tradition of confection.The processing of the confetti of Sulmona took place at the Monastery of Santa Chiara where, through a special technique, the confetti were used to give life to decorative motifs such as flowers, ears, clusters, rosaries.
While the most prized almond variety is the almond of Avola from Sicily that thanks to its oval shape and flat allows the sugar (finely worked) to wrap the almond at best giving life to refined confetti with a characteristic and traditional flavor.

Sugared almonds are also traditional elsewhere in Europe: in Greece for example there is the superstition that if an unmarried woman places confetti under her pillow she will dream about her future husband.

The word confetto comes from the Latin confectum, past participle of conficere and means “prepared, packaged”. In the Middle Ages this term was referred to jams or dried fruit covered with honey. It seems that the first candy was invented by an Arab who had the intuition to cover the medicine with a sweet shell to make it more pleasant and addressed only for therapeutic purposes but there are no documents to date exactly this invention.

From the more traditional classic version of confetti, delicious bonbons characterized by the typical hardened sugar shell and a precious almond of Avola, today we can choose by many variations declined in the most unusual tastes: chocolate (sometimes white, sometimes dark) pistachio, coffee, fruits and so on.

According to the first testimonies the origins of the confetti could be dated to Ancient Rome when the tradition wanted that the guests of a marriage or celebration should pay homage bringing with them small hard candies as a sign of good luck, prosperity and health; in this case the ancestors of our confetti were made with almond cores, honey and flour and we need to wait the advent of the first sugar imports from India for the real confetti.

Another ancient tradition consisted in throwing them on the bride and groom at the exit of the church along with the rice and the petals, but instead of having the almond soul, they contained a coriander seed as a fertility wish. And for this last tradition in many foreign languages today the word ‘confetti’ means just confetti, the small pieces of paper that are launched during the holidays.

An additional old conviction is between confetti and the odd number considered bearers of a positive charge. Depending on the number of confetti delivered, the tribute will take on different value and with a different symbolic meaning:
5 confetti are a wish for health, fertility, long life, happiness and wealth;
3 confetti symbolize the married couple and the first child;
1 only candy is for the indissolubility of the married couple and the uniqueness of the event.

We have news of confetti starting from 1200 in Venice, where they came from the markets from the Far East. Always around 1200 it goes back to the custom of preserving confetti in precious caskets, a custom that about two centuries later will give life to the bomboniere. The etymology of the term ”bonbonnière” in fact, derives from the French “bon bon” and indicated a small and precious container that women and noblemen carried with them. This container was very fashionable, chiseled by prestigious goldsmiths and therefore a very important object to accompany happy events such as births, marriages and festivities.

Around 1400, each gala reception had to include large cups containing confetti on each table. The manufacture of modern sweets began in Sulmona in the fifteenth century. Some testimonies are found in the archive of the Municipality in documents dated 1492 – 1493. It is said that they were much appreciated by Napoleon, Louis XIV and Queen Elizabeth. The 14th century French literature mentions sugared almonds with the taste of rose, musk and violet. In Italy, poets and writers such as Manzoni, Leopardi, Carducci, Verga, Pascoli and D’Annunzio have mentioned confetti as sweets that enrich important lunches and solemn ceremonies.

Today during the wedding the confetti can never be lacking and proposed both as “bomboniere” and “confettata” a table entirely dedicated to the most varied types and tastes of candy served in various bowls and offered to the guests freely.