After some toasting, greeting our guests and more photo taking, it was time for dinner. Our entrees are pictured from our tasting, as again, we didn't photograph them the night of our wedding reception!
Everyone started with the house salad, which is good. Honestly, I don't remember anything about it except that we've had it a few different times, and it is always good. I'm pretty sure we didn't even get to eat ours this particular night.
For our entrees, we wanted to stay true to who we are. This meant no meat, except a seafood option. We chose three options, since meat eaters tend to be finicky about their veggies. Since our seafood option was salmon, and many people dislike that as well, we wanted to be sure that if someone hates one thing or is allergic to another, he/she still had something to pick from. We weren't trying to torture people with vegetarian food, but rather to delight them with the unexpected.
Our first veggie option was a mushroom wellington, served with garden veggies and a red pepper puree:
The mushroom was a portabella served in a puff pastry. This dish was delicious! (We didn't eat this the night of the wedding, but our guests loved it.) What I loved about it is that it was really quite a comfort food dish.
Our second veggie option was baby eggplant ratatouille with homemade gnocchi:
During the tasting, this was mine and DP's favorite choice. The eggplant was perfectly grilled with a wonderful smoky flavor, the gnocchi were soft and delicious with a saffron broth. The other veggies were a nice touch. I absolutely loved the chef's interpretation of ratatouille in this dish.
The night of our wedding, it was a bit underwhelming, but hopefully that is because our plates were ice cold by the time we got to them. I also think more care was taken in preparing our tasting plate versus the 35 eggplant dishes prepared for our guests the evening of the reception. Still, people approached us to tell us the eggplant was delicious, so hopefully they weren't just being nice and their food was better than our hours old plates.
Our final dish was a chipotle salmon with roasted redskin potatoes:
For the tasting, they brought me a half portion since DP hates salmon and wouldn't be eating any. This was very good. It is a regular menu item for the Cosmo and I highly recommend it! The salmon was well-cooked, moist and flavorful, and the accompaniments were a nice compliment.
For dessert, we'd opted against a cake, I think mostly wanting to avoid the formality of plating and serving, and also the expectation of cutting it in ceremonious fashion and smashing it on each other's faces.
Instead, the Cosmo provided a variety of desserts for a large dessert display, and we took the liberty of adding a couple of others from outside vendors.
First, we decided to display some old fashioned candies to enhance the look of the display and also celebrate our vintage/rustic theme:
I purchased amber glass candy dishes on etsy to use in the display. This was sassafrass candy, which we thought was very clever since you can buy real sassafrass tea in old town.
We also had lemon drops and root beer barrels.
To celebrate our Italian roots, we ordered cannoli from a local baker as well:
These were very delicious! Thanks to our coordinator, we actually managed to eat some desserts! She made little plates for us and left them on our sweetheart table, and we ate them later in our room.
We also ordered three varieties of cupcakes from a baker in town:
These were my personal favorite: lemon cake with lemon filling and lemon buttercream icing.
We also had chocolate with buttercream frosting in a terra cotta rose style:
(bottom of the picture)
I'll tell you what, I am not the biggest fan of chocolate cupcakes, but these were moist and not too sweet.
(This post is bogged down. Desserts continued in the next post.)
um..DW was going to start making me lots of pies, because that's what wives do. (I'm pretty sure that up to that point, she had NEVER made any pie at all.) We thought it was charming and funny at first. Now it still just seems so odd, but I guess DW it is! She loved your post by the way. She apparently agrees with you and is sick of being "DP."
And this really helped to settle my nerves.
You both look absolutely stunning! Your dresses were just beautiful!
Most string quartets already know several Disney pieces, and then they were able to find sheet music for the others fairly easily. I'm so glad we were able to incorporate some Disney into our wedding. It just wouldn't have been us without it.
