The pink cupcakes are made of vanilla cake, with pink buttercream frosting and white buttercream roses on top, edged in pink sprinkles. The white cupcakes are made of vanilla cake, with white fondant and white buttercream roses on top, edged in pearl nonpareils. The cake, fillings, frosting and decorations can be custom-ordered. Let your wedding guests eat cake - cupcakes, that is.

These miniature desserts, once a novelty at weddings, are now commonplace and a popular alternative to traditional wedding cakes. They also make delightful favors. Cupcakes can be served on a platter or displayed on several cake tiers in a soaring cupcake tower. They come in different sizes, bite-size, standard and jumbo, scrumptious flavors, and with assorted fillings, frostings and decorations.

Couples can customize the designs, flavors and colors to coordinate with their wedding theme. Janet Ben-Ami, creative designer for Dortoni and La Bonne Boulangerie bakeries, says some brides go for big and bold designs. One bride's cupcakes were iced in ivory butter cream, edged with gold pearls and each featured a single large sunset orange lotus flower.

In some cases, cupcakes can be cheaper than a traditional cake. And they create less waste because guests can take the treats home as favors. But is a dessert so strongly associated with childhood birthday parties too informal for a wedding? Not at all, say Long Island bakers, who decorate their cupcakes with the same finesse they use on their wedding cakes. And couples don't have to worry about giving up the tradition of cake-cutting. The top tier of a cupcake tower can be served as a cake, so the time-revered ceremony of cutting the cake is not lost. Let the party begin.

An Easter egg hunt in East Norwich may well lead to La Bonne Boulangerie. At this handsome eight-year-old bakery you’ll find Easter sweet bread in three shapes and sizes, priced by the number of whole eggs in their shells that have been nestled and baked in the flaky brioche dough. A roll with one egg perched in the middle is $2.75; a 10-inch bread “crown” holding three eggs is $8.25, and the five-egg, 12-inch cross-shaped centerpiece is $13.75. The season also brings traditional hot-cross buns, filled with dried fruit and marked with a white-icing cross on top ($1.75 each).

Holiday sweets are a specialty of the owners, the Messina family, who own the adjacent Messina Market and two other Long Island bakeries: La Bonne Boulangerie in Port Jefferson and the Levittown bakery Dortoni, which Raffaele Messina started in 1976. “Keeping tradition alive, that’s really what we do,” said Daniele Messina, his son. “This is what Grandma used to make for the holidays.”

The bakery, which Mr. Messina describes as international, covers Italian territory with an old-fashioned Easter pie filled with wheat grain and ricotta ($18.50). Jewish tradition is represented with Passover-style mandelbrot, a cookielike bread in chocolate marble or nut varieties ($9.50 a loaf) and coconut macaroons ($13 a pound). Although not kosher, the Passover items are made using cornstarch and matzoh meal, not flour.

The bakery specializes in elaborately decorated cakes for weddings and other special occasions; other year-round temptations include tortes and housemade breads ranging from buttery croissants ($1.90 each) to a hearty Swiss muesli loaf ($8). The bakery has only two stools and a small counter at which to sit. It’s better to take the sweets home for the holidays.

La Bonne Boulangerie, 62-47 Route 25A, East Norwich; (516) 624-8900. www.labonneboulangerie.com.