Manolo for the Brides

For many years, cakes have ruled wedding receptions. One of the first questions people ask about weddings is what the cake either looked or tasted like.

Over the course of the past few years, though, the cake has started losing its place at the party. Oh, it’s not like they’re going away anytime soon. I expect them to continue to be the most popular dessert at weddings for a very long time to come. It’s just that now more people are more open to variations on the theme.

One popular variation that’s sprung up of late is the dessert bar. With this option, the couple may or may not have a traditional cake, but they will offer multiple options in sweet ways to end a meal.

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In the past week, I’ve seen a new trend talked up on two different wedding reality shows. On both Rich Bride, Poor Bride and Whose Wedding is it, Anyway? couples have been advised to get and have chosen to hire living tables.

What’s a living (or strolling) table? Well, it’s a person who dresses up in a costume and stands inside a hole in a table on casters decorated to match the costume. The table is then set with a selection of hors d’oeuvres, or desserts that guests can help themselves to as the table wanders through your reception or party.

Here’s what it looks like:

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Oh, Amy Atlas… I couldn’t have afforded an event planner to handle my wedding, much less one highly sought-after in New York City like yourself, but when it comes to dessert, I can certainly aspire to be you. Atlas, you see, specializes in creating perfect dessert tables for high-end events, and perfect they are.

Here, custom yellow and black chocolates, licorice mints, and lemon cupcakes complement a graphic tiered cake. This table of sweets was designed for a company party, but would look utterly smashing at a modern wedding with a yellow and black theme.

Beware dieters! The close-up shots of the various sweets are gorgeous enough to make a girl salivate for something sugary, and there are more colorful candy pics from Amy Altas’ portfolio after the cut!

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A few months back, I noticed that everyone I know seems to be obsessed with bacon. In the recent holiday gift issue of New York Magazine — which I began receiving for free about two years ago for some bizarre reason — plenty of their holiday poll respondents mentioned bacon as the perfect holiday prezzie. I don’t get it. Even before I stopped eating meat, I’d always choose sausage over bacon. To each their own, I suppose.

If you are a true bacon aficionado and looking for a perfect (perfectly dreadful?) wedding favor that highlights your interests, how about giving your wedding guests maple bacon lollipops to take home after the reception?

Okay, I just shuddered thinking about it. I’d much rather have one of Lollyphile’s wasabi ginger pops, though I’ll pass on the absinthe flavor. Of course, there is no one wedding favor that will please all of your guests. I do wonder, however, whether bacon sweets like the aforementioned lollies, bacon jelly beans, and bacon cookies will delight even half your wedding guests.

One of the thornier issues that comes up when planning a wedding is the menu. No matter what you do, someone is going to be unhappy with what you choose to serve. This only becomes more true if you are planning not to serve either or both of two popular items: alcohol and meat.

For some reason, there are a great many people who cannot wrap their heads around the concept that meat is not necessary in every meal or that it’s possible to have a good time without an alcoholic drink. The fact is it’s perfectly possible to have not only a delicious but a completely satisfying meal sans meat and it’s more than possible to have a blast without a glass of bubbly.

Chances are, though, that at least one or two people on your guest list would be skeptical of my claims in this regard.

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Picture from British Cosmo Bride/Photo by Nick Scott

Unless you’re going to city hall to tie the knot, your wedding will probably be anything but simple. Hosting a party for 50 or 100 or 500 people is always going to be somewhat complicated. Your favorite venue may not be available exactly when you want it. The caterer you adore may not normally offer the vegan options that will placate your mother’s side of the family. And it can sometimes feel like everyone from your bridesmaids to your FFIL can’t make a single decision without consulting you!

AAAARGH!

The good news is that while weddings are almost always chaotic, you can take steps to make yours a little less so. Here are a few tips that may help you stay sane as you walk boldly toward wifehood (or husbandhood, for that matter).

Pay your own way
Taking gifts of matrimonial money from loved ones often means taking their input under consideration as well. Just like too many cooks ruin the soup, too many meddling relatives can ruin a wedding. Footing the bill yourself means that you can do your own thing without feeling an ounce of guilt. Of course, you should say no nicely, but by all means feel free to say no!

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When you head to either your friendly neighborhood caterer, your own cookbook shelf, or your favorite group of church ladies to work out your wedding reception menu, a great many concerns will affect your final choices: price, personal taste, known food issues among your nearest and dearest (allergies, moral or religious dietary restrictions, cousin Wendy’s legendary phobia of Brussels sprouts), cultural expectations, etc.

But there’s one thing that most likely won’t even enter your thoughts: availability.

We’re spoiled for choice today. If strawberries aren’t in season, we can get them from another hemisphere or an agricultural concern that creates the correct circumstances for strawberries to grow all year round. If we want lemongrass, it doesn’t have to grow nearby. Freezing techniques allow us to have duck, venison, or lamb whatever the time of year. Corn on the cob in December? Not a problem.

Back through the mists of time, though, what you ate depended far more heavily on where you were and what time of year it happened to be. If you wanted oysters but lived inland, you might well be out of luck. If the only fruit trees in the local orchards were apple and peach, then good luck coming up with oranges. Oh, and if you wanted a cake, it took much stronger arms to whisk the ingredients since you wouldn’t have a nice stand mixer to whip the butter and eggs for you. Excuse me for a moment while I go pet my KitchenAid.

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I know, I know, NtB just wrote a great article on centerpieces, and here I go copying her again. Well, not quite. I think this is more continuing on a theme. After all, she talked about using tea tins as containers…well, this is about using actual edibles as part of your centerpiece.

After all, there’s no law that says you have to limit yourself to flowers and candles on your table. There are dozens of edible things that are as pretty as they are delicious. For instance, I find myself wishing I’d thought of this for my outdoor, summer wedding:

Not only is it bright and festive, but the fresh scent of lemons (or oranges, or limes, or grapefruits) is delightful in the air. Oh, and this is easy, too. If you’re interested in trying it, the instructions can be found here.

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Many a USian will bust out (and dust off) the ol’ barbecue today, if they haven’t already done so. I was invited to at least two Memorial Day eatstravaganzas, but I declined both invitations for reasons I’ll likely talk about over at Manolo for the Home. Nowadays, I tend to just “stop by” most barbecues because I don’t eat meat and man cannot live on sides alone. But once upon a time…

The Beard and I weren’t always vegetarians. Our original intention was to have a DIY wedding barbecue limited to family only. That bit was scrapped when it became clear that my ginormous family would dwarf his tiny one. Then we started adding friends to the guest list — first his, then ours, then mine — and the whole thing just plain fell apart.

Questions rained down upon us from critical loved ones. Who would man the smoker while a hundred people waited for their meat? Would there be enough time to whip up sides in the days and hours leading up to the wedding? The first element of our reception plan to go was DIY…all of my relatives who’d for years waxed poetic about how they were going to pitch in when I got hitched were suddenly nowhere to be found. Like Twistie recently said, help is a big (and usually necessary) part of successful DIY.

We were frankly surprised to find that the catering menus of local barbecue joints weren’t all that cheaper than other restaurants, so we decided to shop around before settling on any one kind of cuisine. A few months later we stopped eating meat, found a catering company with an awesome veg menu, and that was one more item crossed off the pre-nuptial To Do list.

Image by soozums

So how does one have the perfect DIY wedding barbecue? I’d say that the first thing you want to do is order yourself some bulk napkins because sauce is a crafty beastie that will find some way to hitch a ride on clean formalwear. Oh, and don’t forget to solicit some assistants.

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