My wife and I celebrated our two year anniversary this week, an occasion that of course brought to mind that huge fun and emotion-filled day. We planned and coordinated just about everything ourselves, handing over the reigns of our big project to the venue organizer only on the day of the event. Since it is fall and wedding planning may be in the cards for some readers, I thought it'd be a good time to share some tips for putting your own personal touch on the wedding meal.
Picking the Venue
We put a lot of thought into our wedding, and specifically chose a venue that was open to having us customize just about everything. We wanted freedom to bring in our own caterers and a few other surprises. Not all venues are so forgiving, so if you plan on exacting every detail be sure to gauge their response to your plans accordingly. Many venues we toured had the "we'll take care of everything approach," which is all well and good for some, but not for us. We wanted our personal touch throughout the whole event. We chose a venue that allowed us to bring in our own alcohol and beverages (we just had to hire a couple bartenders), caterers, cake maker, and even accommodate one other surprise I'll get to later. Surprisingly, organizing all these things yourself from a variety of vendors happened to also be less expensive than the all-in-one package most venues offered. It'll be more planning for you, but if you're up for it (like we were) it'll make everything that much more special.
Choosing a Caterer
My wife and I love food. If all else failed, we wanted people to say that at least the food was great. We pondered for a bit on how we could cook things ourselves for the big day to make it a more intimate affair. My large extended family, however, made that an impractical solution. Instead we tested out several caterers, bringing along with us a detailed list of our vision. We wanted a meal that featured our favorite foods and tastes from our travels and from our own homes. We didn't want the standard entreé, salad, and a few sides. Instead we wanted a more eclectic mix of bites big and small that gave people insight into our culinary adventures. We wanted pretzels that reminded us of our trip to Germany; grilled pizzas because it's our favorite thing to cook at home; mini burgers because I won my wife over the day I grilled some in the snow while living in Minnesota; Cuban sandwiches because my wife regularly feasted on them in college; crab cakes because they're one of the few things we've never successfully made, and so on.
For drinks we bought kegs and cases of wine from a local wine & liquor store. We also wanted to bring in organic juice blends from our favorite juicer and have bartenders optionally spike them for our guests by creating cukes and spicy margaritas. We tasted samples and samples—hmmm, wedding planning does have its perks—and picked a caterer that had the enthusiasm, confidence, and versatility to do what we wanted. The one we chose seemed to get it, offering ideas during our meeting that aligned with our taste and personality.
The Unexpected
When we host parties or have people over for dinner we like to do a little something extra and unexpected. Since we got married in Austin and the food truck scene was beginning to take-off, we wanted to bring in some of our favorite food trucks after the cake was cut. The only thing I love more than chocolate chip cookies is a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich. Cool Haus was just starting up in Austin, and we had them drop by and deliver tiered stacks of their delicious cookie ice cream sandwiches for my groom cake. There are few things my wife enjoys more than coffee, so we brought in a coffee truck that blended up smoothies, blended coffees, and all sorts of drinkable delights. We were a little curious how this would be received to people not from Austin, but it was great and we smiled upon seeing our guests gravitate towards the trucks and enjoy food as we enjoy it in our hometown.
We put a lot of work into it all, making our own table arrangements from wood slices, coring apples so a votive candle would fit inside them, making place cards that detailed the importance of each food to us, etc. All that effort paid off, though, so that the 'happiest day of our life' really was true. The biggest part of our wedding budget was definitely the food and the photos. But those are precisely the areas you want to splurge. That way when you look back at everything years later you can experience, and perhaps even taste, those moments all over again.
Related: How Do I Serve a Meal to 150 Wedding Guests for Less Than $2000?
(Images: Erin Woolsey)
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Well, we put a personal touch on the wedding meal by making most of the food and hiring a guy to do a mechoui (grilled meats, and so tasty!)
And yes, if you have decent project management and cooking skills, cooking and planning a meal for 120 ahead of time is entirely manageable - we actually got a ton of compliments regarding the food from people who thought we'd had it catered and wanted the number of the caterer!
I thought I recognized those ice cream sandwiches! I spent the summer in Austin and the food trucks were definitely a highlight.
Since I was just home from a year working in India (where my husband and I technically met), we had Indian street food at our wedding. We had the event at my parent's church and one of the best parts of the whole awesome day was watching the church ladies who came to help and the Indian caterers navigate around each other in the kitchen.
Congrats on the anniversary!
Finding a caterer was probably the most important thing to us! I'm a Southern girl, born and raised, and my husband is Hawaiian Chinese and grew up all over Asia. We really wanted our menu to reflect both, which so many caterers seemed completely unwilling to do on a small budget. In the end though, we found the right one for us. People still rave about our food, and I sometimes dream of it. No lie.
That looks lovely (and delicious)! What's the name of the venue?
I got married this summer in Rhode Island (where we currently live), and both my husband and I are Southerners. We knew there would be an interesting mix of southerners and "Yankees" at the wedding so we designed a menu that embraced our roots and our new home. For us, that meant having two food stations; a Southern Station (shrimp and grits,collards, pulled pork, corn bread, jamabalaya, etc) and a New England Station (stuffed quahogs, clam chowder, Yankee pot roast, etc). Dessert was a red velvet wedding cake (southern) served with coffee milk milkshakes (so Rhode Island). We even did a signature southern drink (spiked Arnold Palmer) and a signature New England drink (Cape Cod). Everyone LOVED the fun selection of food and everyone had comfort food that was both familiar to them as well as had new local things to try. It was a hit! Oh, we also made our rehearsal dinner a traditional lobster boil for all of the out of towners - they had a blast!
Thanks for sharing. It reminded me of my own wedding, also two years ago (Happy Anniversary BTW) as our dinner was a make your own burger bar + dessert was ice cream cones with ice cream dry iced transported down to our So. Cal wedding locaiton from two of our San Francisco home favorite places.
Our reception was in a barn in Santa Barbara wine country, so it was a culinary way for us to pull together our favorite foods, with a nod to our home and show some of our individuality, as we had descriptions of our favorite burgers above the buffet.
I swear if wedding had trending topics like Twitter, ours would have been #burgerbar!
I want to know what the venue is too!
Personalization/Customization = money. Our reception would have cost 5-7K less but we wanted the same things as the writer of this blog so we went for it. Worth. Every. Penny.
I love this! My husband and I splurged on the food and photos for our wedding as well. We customized every single thing that was served and all of the food had meaning to us, making the day truly ours. It was a really fun way to share our lives with our friends and families.
I love the food truck trend at weddings... we just went to one wedding with a gourmet pizza wagon and one with gourmet Texmex truck. No more rubber chicken!
I made my own wedding meal. Turkish braised leeks and carrots, quinoa and beet salad, and gluten-free cake with homemade whipped cream. It was only practicable because we had very few guests (we decided to have a small, intimate wedding at our apartment), but everyone we invited loved that it was a no-stress, no-pressure, totally relaxing day.
@Awstinite @Dona, the venue is Plantation House, and we recommend them highly
This sounds like a good party for all -- the wedding party and the guests. The last wedding I attended was 100% about the princess bride and really pretty miserable for the guests (an extremely cold and uncomfortable venue, buffet food that was made available in shifts, no dessert served even though one was present and displayed, no attempt to choreograph events...it was as if the bride and her family forgot we were all there half way through the reception. (No surprise, then, that the bride didn't bother with thank you notes.) It's so nice when the couple remembers to celebrate their friends and family as well as their own union. After all, people spend a lot of money and time coming to your wedding, and buying gifts. Remember to greet as many of them as you can, and thank them for being there.
We had BBQ buffet at our wedding, and everybody LOVED it. It was delicious and cheap and exactly what we wanted.
The best weddings that I have been to involved fun food, like BBQ and baked beans and cole slaw. I think if people are fun enough to have that type of food, they are fun people in general, which makes for a better wedding. If I have one more frozen flounder stuffed with crab meat......
Reins
Reins are what you hold to steer/ control a horse or other animal.
Reign is what royalty holds for control.
Food was so important to us at our wedding because we are a couple of self proclaimed foodies (and my husband comes from a family of foodies/restauranteurs). We were struggling to choose something from the list of options our venue offered that we thought we and our friends and family would enjoy. While going over my options with one of my bridesmaids and her fiance, I said that all I really wanted on my wedding day was waffles. They encouraged me to have what I wanted. So we chose to have brinner!
We adore breakfast food and our venue agreed to cook up a fantastic spread for us- waffles, french toast, breakfast potatoes, eggs, bacon, sausage, pastries, fresh fruit and toppings. It was a hit with all of our guests- adults and children (many passed our head table, excitedly pointing at their plates).
Our friends still talk about it a year and a half later :)
Thank you, clickchik. Rein/reign are so often mixed up, very bothersome.
My husband and I had a similar approach, DIYing pretty much everything from bow-ties to decor to favors (jam!). We spent the bulk of our money on food and photography. We found a venue that let us hire our own vendors and I was even able to make all of the desserts for our dessert table, save for the tiny cake for cutting (ordered from Whole Foods the day before)! It was all small bites and our caterer provided mixers/garnishes and bartenders while we provided the liquor/beer/wine.