Food

I am hungry this afternoon, so I'm going to talk about food.

The number one reason we decided to have an informal wedding was that when we were looking at reception venues, my husband said the food was all too fancy and he wouldn't eat any of it (although he IS picky). Weddings no longer have to be cookie-cutter. You don't have to serve a choice of chicken or roast beef! The menu should reflect who you are as much as the rest of the day!

Tip 1: If you have a sister (or friend or mom or even yourself) who is a fabulous baker, she can make sugar cookies. My sister makes the best sugar cookies in the world (from the Betty Crocker cookbook recipe). Mine never taste as good. She made two batches and brought them with her, which was a fabulous thing, because the bakery screwed up and didn't send the cookies we ordered. People raved about those cookies. The good thing about sugar cookies like this is that you can freeze them beforehand. She bought colored sprinkles that matched our colors (green and yellow) at Target in the baking aisle.

Tip 2: Food makes great favors. Our guests LOVED our favors and took any extras they could find. We ordered customized ketchup bottles from myheinz.com. The more you buy, the cheaper they are, so they were about $2 each. Heinz offers mustard as well, but my husband is from Cleveland, so we ordered Bertman ballpark mustard. We called the company directly, and though the mustard came in bigger containers (2 0z. versus 4.5), I think it worked out to around the same price. A friend who recently got married had her reception at the zoo and gave out customized animal crackers.

Tip 3: Cupcakes are the way to go. We still had a single-tiered cake to cut but we got chocolate and vanilla cupcakes so our guests wouldn't have to wait for dessert. I got the baseball
"placemat" (it's actually a rug for a kid's room) from Target for $1.

Tip 4: Have fun with it. When my friend Tara got married, her mother told stories about how when she was little, she used to say she was going to have macaroni and cheese and brownies at her wedding. Fifteen years later, she did, although they were fancied up for the occasion.

Make sure that you take time to eat some of the food on your big day!