Afternoon lovelies, it’s Friday… yippee!

Real bride Amy is here to tell us about her search for the perfect vegetarian caterer and her love of Autumn. Amy, the food sounds like it is going to be divine, and now i am all kinds of hungry :-)

Please do share your food choices with us below, we’d love to hear from you XOXO Lou

 

 

Hello. Happy Autumn everybody. I was going to write a pro-autumn post but it seems a bit distasteful what with Jon Snow reporting “the storm” on my telly as I type. Sorry about all the trees blowing over. But, isn’t autumn lovely though. The warm colours make me wish that we were getting married right now. I could wear a cardigan over my dress, and nice snug thermal tights, and carry a stylish brolly, and wear a beret…I’m not sure if I’m a veil kind of girl, I’ve never worn one, but I’m always comfortable in a beret. I suppose the wind and rain and fact that the ISA doesn’t have enough money in it yet might hold things up a bit. Oh, but we could drink warm spiced cider. And have a gorgeous colour scheme with all the warm hues of leaves. And have dried flowers which we could keep forever (I assume that dried flowers last forever, or forever-ish). It sounds like such fun. A photo shoot in a forest. Rose can wear wellies, she looks so good in wellies. Leaves instead of confetti. But, alas, the wedding is 8 months away. That sounds pretty far away to me, and yet people are constantly asking me how wedding preparations are going. My immediate thought is “what preparations, 8 months is practically a year away, I could get pregnant now and the baby would almost be ready to come out”….oh dear, I typed that without really thinking, I’m horribly broody at the moment, please ignore all future references to wishing I had bought a fetching maternity muumuu wedding dress… But when I actually think about it, I am sort of constantly planning, and we do have an awful lot of it already sorted out. I almost can’t believe that I have things booked a YEAR in advance, and that this is normal.

 

The first thing booked was the venue, which also meant that we had an all important date. And at that point I completely panicked. Suddenly it mattered who was going to serve what drinks, at what time, and what we’d eat, and what plates they’d be eating off. So many things to think about. I had sleepless nights. Oh the shame. Sleepless nights about an event which at that point was more than a YEAR away. Urgh. But as soon as I found a caterer that was my main worry over, and now I’m so laid back about it that when someone asks about wedding plans I almost answer “what wedding?”.

We purposefully chose a venue who allowed us to book a caterer separately. Mostly due to the insane prices of the catering at the places I looked at, but also because I suppose I’m a bit of a control freak and didn’t like the idea of buying an all-inclusive wedding. Plus, we’re vegetarian, and plan on having a veggie wedding, and although all the fancy food sounded lovely, I felt like the veggie options we’re all a bit after-though-ish. So for this reason I also rejected all the general caterers I looked at, and decided to look for someone who specialised in vegetarian cuisine. Most of our guests are meat eaters, so we want the food to be really exciting and sort of sell vegetarianism to our guests – not that we’re trying to recruit anyone! I suppose I’m a bit of a food snob, I like food and I like cooking, and the thought of getting served up something that I could have made better myself, and having to pay a ridiculous amount of money for it, doesn’t appeal to me. My first choice would have been our favourite vegetarian restaurant in Leeds, called Hansa’s, who make the BEST Indian Gujarati food, and also do catering. But it is with regret that I have to admit that for some of our guests we’ll be pushing our luck just by not having meat on the menu, let alone only having scary spicy food. We have to consider the oldies. My first evening of googling our options came up with very little, and I started to panic a bit (sleepless night, urgh), but I had the idea of asking people on a local vegetarian and vegan facebook group I’m a member of – and they were absolutely brilliant. Suddenly I had a whole handful of local options, I’d really recommend using social media to ask local people for tips on this kind of thing, I’d never have found our caterer on my own.

And anyway, to make a rambling long story a tiny bit shorter, our caterer is The Bear Outside (http://www.bearco-op.com/outside-catering/), a catering company run by the Bear Cafe, which is a beautiful vegetarian cafe in Todmorden, Yorkshire. As soon as I was recommended them I was really excited, because I’d heard about a scheme called Incredible Edible Todmorden (http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/) – the town is trying to become as self sufficient in food as possible; setting up community growing schemes including in all of the towns schools. It sounds like a really great idea, and The Bear Cafe use supplies from the Incredible Edible scheme, as well as other local suppliers. I’d pretty much settled on them, the menus sound amazing, and to seal the deal we went there for lunch a few months ago. It was so nice. We’d expected somewhere quite hippy-ish, we’ve lunched lots of times in the neighbouring town Hebden Bridge, which is full of little veggie cafes with falafal galore, but as well as having everything we expected it was also dead posh! So it ticked my big food snob box too! I can’t remember exactly what we had, and am kicking myself for not taking any photos, but we both had some kind of platter type thing on a wooden board. Mmmm everything looks good on a wooden board.

The Bear Outside will be providing our main meal, and we only need one because we’re getting married at 3pm, but I do also have some vague plans for evening snacks for guests who’ll just be coming for the d.i.s.c.o. I’m not crazy about the look of wedding cakes, so we’re going for a cake table instead. Lots of cake. I might bake one myself, and I guess some family or friends might fancy bringing one along *hint*, but we’re also going to be using a local vegan bakery called That Old Chestnut (http://thatoldchestnutishere.com/) who make really really good cake. I’ve sampled their wares many times at local craft fairs, and also in a few shops and bakeries who they supply, so we’re really excited to be able to have some of their cakes at our wedding. They do a chocolate and peanut thing which is divine.

I’ve made myself so hungry now. If only the wedding wasn’t a whole 8 months away.