my wedding / the food

i still can't decide what was the best part about my wedding, but a lot of people tell me it was the food. jarman and i are both food people, so naturally we wanted to have some deliciousness present. my mom took charge and created possibly the greatest wedding menu of all history (i may be a bit biased, and probably egocentric).

we knew we wanted to have food stations rather than buffet style, especially because we weren't having formal tables. we mostly served finger food for easy access. the different stations we had were: the cheese table, the patisserie (sweets table), the gelato stand, the soup bar, the cake, the drinks bar, and then we had waitresses passing around the food from the grill. 

the patisserie:

we wanted the patisserie to look like the window of a french bakery. we used the windows on the outside of our house and put curtains up around them. and that clock! how much do you love it? we borrowed it from erin and it was perfection. we stacked benches and cake plates for the display.

i don't even know if i can name every single treat that we had. there were the cute pink meringues, as well as pink macaroons. we ordered canoli's from campini's (one of the only things that wasn't homemade). we made little dessert shooters (p.f. changs was our inspiration). there was a banana schwag shooter (oreo crust, cream filling, bananas, whipped cream and carmel), and a ganache torte shooter (nut crust with a rich chocolate ganache filling and carmel on top). we made german chocolate donut holes (i refused to call them cake pops even though that is basically what they were). my sister-in-law made my favorite oreo brownies and we had traditions cupcakes (basically a cookie cupcake). and now i'm starving.

the gelato cart: 

i am so glad we did a little gelato cart! i had gotten back from italy a few months before the wedding and was missing having a reason to eat gelato every day! but, i'm going to tell you our secret, we didn't actually get gelato. we searched everywhere we could, but all of the gelato that we tried was not good enough. so we ended up using private private (private selection, from ralph's) chocolate ganache and salted carmel ice. you would be surprised how delicious it is. probably the only ice cream that i would feel comfortable calling gelato!

the cake: 

i heard the smartest thing the other day. someone told me that they packed up large pieces of cake for the bride and groom to take away with them and eat on their honeymoon. i want to try to do this for every bride i can, because it's true, you really don't ever get a chance to eat your own cake!  

i will never forget our cake testing and choosing the flavors of this cake. we showed up to the shop with 8 people. they had to pull over and entire extra table. jarman called in sick to work that day to come, braden came with his mom, and there was my mom, cindy, erin, and kristi. it was the best thing ever, i might just make a hobby out of it. the flavors we ended up choosing were flavors i never expected myself to pick for my wedding cake. the bottom layer was a white cake with a creme filling and strawberries- and i have always said i only like chocolate desserts and firmly believe that fruit ruins the point of dessert. except in this case, it was to die for. the middle layer was a chocolate cake with a peanut butter and chocolate filling. the top was another chocolate cake with a german chocolate filling, because i had to stick to my faves somehow.

also, my cake was supposed to be pink and have a giant fondant dahlia on it. and it showed up white with no dahlia. it's a beautiful cake as it is, but i was a little disappointed. a pink cake would have been bang-a-rang. 

the cheese table: 

we put my grandma in charge of the cheese table, and she did a fabulous job! we were kind of going for a farmer's market look. i love the additions of the fruit and olives and bread, it just made it look business (which apparently is a new term in my family). my favorite cheese was my grandma's homemade boursin,  it has a great peppery flavor. my friend who got home from his mission in paris the day of our wedding told me that we spelled 'fromage' wrong, but we were actually writing cheese in italian not french, so formaggio is correct.

the soup:

we served little cups of soup knowing it would probably be cold outside. we served a brie mushroom bisque (yes, it's as delicious as it sounds) and tomato soup, each with its own baguette.

the grill: 

sadly, this is the only picture of the food we had from the grills. the grilled food was definitely the highlight. we served steak and chicken shish kabobs, and two different types of sliders. my dad's best friend has been making the steak shish kabobs for us for years, and they have always been my favorite food. since i was little, he promised me he would make them for my wedding, and he came through! i was so happy to have them there!

originally i did not want to have sliders at my wedding. i thought it seemed lame and cheap, and was annoyed because we have them like every other sunday at my house. then i realized that it was kind of a carpenter thing to have everyone over for sliders, so i ended up being fine with it. one type of slider was bacon bbq with crispy onion strips. the other had a grilled-onion-bleu-cheese sauce with spinach. they were both delicious.

the bar: 

how cute is that bar? it was all virgin, but cute nonetheless! we served all different bottled drinks, and had my uncles mix mojitos and italian cream sodas. we also had martinelli's, which is probably jarman's favorite drink ever. towards the end of the wedding when we were all really riled up the song 'tipsy' came on, and paul grabbed a bottle of martinelli's and every took a swig and passed it around. well somehow after jacklin took her drink, she brought the bottle back down and hit it on my cousin's head and cracked half of her own front tooth off! i wish i had seen it the night of the wedding, but i totally missed it. so sorry about that jack! 

i hope you are as hungry as i am now!