Hello friends!
The whirlwind week of wedding planning/apartment hunting in DC (aka spring break) continues! Yesterday, Matt, his mom, my mom, and I spent the day doing wedding stuff. We had a meeting with the wedding planner from our site, who had organized a busy day for us — nice and efficient, just how I like it. Here’s what we did:
- A tasting with the caterer (including reception food, appetizers, and rehearsal dinner food)
- A tasting with the baker (CAKE!)
- A review of 3 different possible table setting options from the florist our site works with, based on what we’d discussed
- And while we tasted food, we discussed a billion other details. It was quite the day!
First up when we arrived was checking out the beautiful table settings they had arranged for us. Matt and I are going for a sort of rustic romantic sort of theme — not too fancy or fussy, and we didn’t want big flower centerpieces (too $$) — we had talked before about doing something romantic and earthy with a lot of candles, water, petals, etc.
This one was my absolute favorite — I loved it! Exactly what we were going for. They used a sort of gel to suspend the flowers in the glasses — isn’t that cool? Loved the candles and multi-level look, too.
Next up was this one which was a bit too traditional for our taste, but still lovely.
However — this is the type of look I want for the bridal bouquets! Fun, loose, colorful.
And lastly was another cool multi-level candle display:
We liked this one a lot too, but decided to go for circular glass instead of square so it matched the first one better. We’re going to do two different table settings because the team said it would be more visually appealing — sounds good to me! So we went with the first one (which is pretty tall), and this one, which is much lower. We’re going to do more colorful flowers inside the glasses instead of the ones coming out the top, too. I think it should be a fun comparison!
Next up was the food!
When Matt and I had our meeting with the caterer (that comes with our site) a few months ago, I surprised them by knowing exactly what I wanted — we planned a pretty awesome menu, so yesterday we were just tasting the specific things that we decided we wanted. The main goal, given that I’m going to be a Registered Dietitian and all, was delicious food, but also healthy-ish food — no cream sauces or fried food here! 🙂 I also wanted food that would be creative and fresh and with a fall harvest theme, since we’d getting married in October.
First, we tasted the appetizers we’ll have passed around during our cocktail hour. Bacon wrapped scallops and Caribbean shrimp — both amazing:
We’ll also have some fun fresh Thai summer rolls, since Matt and I love them — first, one with shrimp and pork:
And a vegan one with veggies (we decided to add tofu to this to make it more fun):
For the reception, we’ll be having a plated seated salad, followed by a buffet for the actual dinner. Here’s our salad — mixed greens, carrots, cherry tomatoes, candied walnuts, and herbed goat cheese. We decided to do little dressing boats on the table instead of adding the dressing, so people can use however much they like, and the cheese is on the side so it can be avoided if necessary.
On the buffet, we’ll be having roasted herb chicken (this was AMAZING — super juicy) and a London Broil carving station:
A Spanish style tofu dish (vegan — and AMAZING) — with white beans, mushrooms, red pepper, lemon zest, oregano, smoked sweet paprika and sherry vinegar:
They served it with this yummy garlic herb bread — great combination:
We also tasted a vegan coconut curry tofu dish as an option, but decided on the tofu/bean dish — so good.
There will also be a quinoa dish (also vegan, so everyone can enjoy it) with dried cranberries, etc.:
And all sorts of veggies:
Roasted green beans, asparagus, potatoes, and butternut squash. All exactly how we hoped it would be — the veggies were crisp and not overcooked, and the potatoes and squash were great, too.
SO excited to eat all of this again at the wedding! I think we have a great mix of options, and I love that it’s a buffet so everyone can get exactly what they want!
Next, we tasted a couple items for the rehearsal dinner. We’re using the same caterer and we’re going to have a casual and fun BBQ with lawn games as a nod to North Carolina. 🙂 We didn’t taste everything for the rehearsal (more just talked about other ideas/refined the menu since Matt’s mom was with us to give input), but we tried these pulled pork sliders:
They were delicious — and on whole wheat buns, too. 🙂
We also tasted some slaw options — we’re going to go for one of these and them maybe a red cabbage vinaigrette slaw.
There’s also talk of having collard greens, sweet potato wedges, chicken/veggie/fruit grilled kabobs, and veggie burgers for vegetarians/vegans. For dessert, pie and ice cream. 🙂 And we’re bringing our own alcohol to save money and so that we can do some fun Pittsburgh beer and local VA wine. I’m so excited!
Last but not least was the cake!
The baker our site recommended brought a number of choices for us to sample.
I was into the lemon options, so I tried the regular lemon and the lemon raspberry.
Loved the lemon raspberry! We’re doing one cake (no grooms cake), but the baker said we could have two different flavors in it, so we decided to go for lemon raspberry as one and a Frangelico for the other flavor (also a white cake, just with Frangelico/chocolate filling), to mix things up.
Whew! We had quite the day, as you can tell. Lots of progress made!
Today’s adventure is to start looking at apartments here in DC since we’ll be moving back in early May. I loathe apartment hunting — so stressful. Especially when we currently have a massive and cheap 2 bedroom 2 bathroom in Chapel Hill — it’s looking like we’ll be downsizing to a 1 bedroom 1 bathroom for double the price here. 🙁 Fail. Why must this area be so expensive?!
Wish us luck!
