Food and drink usually play a huge role in a wedding reception, particularly if the bride and groom are anything like me and Paul. However, not everyone wants to go down the traditional route of a three course meal and tiered cake. Below are some of the food and drink ideas we are incorporating into our wedding celebrations in September. It’s making my mouth water just thinking about them…
Hog Roast
We knew from Day 1 of being engaged that we wanted a hog roast at the wedding. Paul is a huge fan of his meat, and we didn’t really want a traditional sit down dinner as it’s just not very us. I tasked my long-suffering Mum with finding a good hog roast company, and she came up with Love Me Tender, who I believe can regularly be found serving food in Camden and on Battersea’s Northcote Road. Until recently, my whole family had sampled a Love Me Tender hog roast and declared it to be brilliant, but Paul and I had yet to give it a go. Then we unexpectedly came across the company at a London Zoo evening event, and we were smitten – believe me, that is some seriously good pork.
Rose Beer
Just before we got engaged we spent a few days in Brussels. Whilst there we visited a fantastic pub called the Delirium Cafe, which prides itself on holding the Guinness record for the largest number of different beers sold commercially. Needless to say, we had to try a few of them (well, it would have been rude not to!). One that particularly appealed as it was so unusual was Florilège de Rose, a rose flavoured Belgian beer.
Florilège de Rose is not available in the UK, and whilst it can be purchased online it’s much more expensive that way. Luckily for us, one of my bridesmaids, Astrid, has a Belgian mum who also happens to be very lovely and helpful. Through her wonderful organisation, a friend is bringing us back some crates of Florilège de Rose from the brewery in time for our big day.
Cake
I was determined that one thing we most definitely were not going to do at our wedding was have a traditional wedding cake. This was due partly to the fact that many wedding cakes seem to be outrageously expensive, and partly due to the fact that Paul and I aren’t really big fans of cake in general. We were much more interested in tracking down good meat for the main course than focussing on pudding.
However, I realise that there are a lot of people who do love cake, and we couldn’t have a wedding reception without some kind of dessert. So we are planning to have a cake table with a spread of different cakes and desserts, some bought and some homemade. I’ve already had offers from bridesmaids and family to make cake pops, lemon tart, chocolate brownies and tarte tatin, so I think there will be quite a feast!
Rock
I’d heard about people who had had personalised rock at their weddings (with their names written through it) and thought it was a fun idea. However, it turned out that getting rock personalised was ridiculously expensive, so I abandoned that plan and started looking for something cheaper but cute to give to sweet-toothed wedding guests. I found this website that sells little individual pieces of rock with a variety of different messages. We’ll be going for the green and brown ‘All you need is love’ ones – hopefully they’ll go down a treat.
Champagne in tea cups
When people arrive at the reception from the ceremony we are going to welcome them with champagne served in mismatched vintage china tea cups. We will be hiring the teacups from the Crockery Cupboard, in addition to some vintage plates for serving the hog roast. The teacups idea was one of the first ones I had for the wedding, and I’m ridiculously excited to see how it all turns out.
You can read more wedding-related posts on my blog Edible Glitter. Recent posts include:
Seed Wedding Favours
Seven Hotel Paris
