To a lot of people, weddings are about having your dreams come true, breaking the normal rules and being justified in doing exactly what you want, and making a splurge.
Well, I’m sorry, but if most people’s dreams come true on their wedding day, they have pretty limited dreams. I’m not talking about marriage to the love of your life – I’m talking about the wedding.
Weddings are about compromise more than ever.
And the strange thing is that the people around you don’t even know. Their generosity is astounding. They push money and gifts upon you, offer to be there to help, go out of the way to enhance your enjoyment, excitment and the quality of the things you’re investing in.
But at the same time, they will start making demands. We don’t want you to have your wedding there, it’s not nice enough! It’s worth splashing out on your wedding day. We’ll help you. X has to sit next to Y, and if X doesn’t get on with Y’s other half, Y’s other half will have to be moved. You can’t have that! Nobody will like it.
They think they’re making your day better – actually they are making your day better for them.
Yes, everyone needs a bit of advice, because there will always be things we haven’t thought about – mistakes to avoid, butI think it’s very different to say to somebody, “Have you thought about how you’re going to dance in that?” or “Go and buy and better one – you can: it’s your wedding day!” But I… liked… the first one.
And of course, you do want your wedding day to be good for your guests. When did it become about the bride and groom’s taste anyway? When my grandparents got married, the bride’s parents traditionally arranged everything for her: they would not only pay, but also arrange the guest list and choose the trimmings. Yet only two generations later, we behave as if we have some kind of god given right to golden candelabras covered in paper butterflies if we want golden candelabras covered in butterflies! We have themes. The dress matches the venue. We write vows.
The wedding is no longer a present to the couple from the bride’s family on their marriage, it is an expression of the bride and groom, from the bride and groom. And there is more competition.
But even competition means that you’re expressing yourselves less than you want to, than you think you are, because you’re defining yourselves by comparison.
So what am I saying? Essentially, don’t stress over the dream. The dream is never going to be realised, not at your wedding. Insist sometimes, and give in others. Strike a balance. Don’t worry about competing.
Some things are just not feasible. Like my desire to have a singing moose head at our wedding.
…I know.
But we came across this singing Chrismas moose at the German Christmas market and I adored it. I was so excited – like a little child. Can you imagine having this singing at your wedding?
It would be very, very unique.
Unfortunately, google cannot tell me where to hire a singing moose head. I’ve no idea who would get it there and operate it, and it would probably be hideously expensive anyway. Building our own singing moose head is not really an option. But what does it matter? Will anybody’s enjoyment be seriously decreased by lack of singing moose? Will anybody (who doesn’t read this blog) even know? You go through lots of ideas in the course of events planning and most of them go straight out the window. That’s just how it works.
I’ve played with calorie counting, and now I’ve tried Healthy Snacks. I know, I know… it conjures up awful images of rice cakes and apples when everybody else is eating large wedges of chocolate cake. So I made cereal bars.
You may not be able to see too well, but they’re cut into wedges about 2.5 x 2 x 7cm. These are very easy to make. In a pan, I melt 1 large tablespoonful of butter and 1 of honey with a bag of soft toffees. I then pour this goop over a mixture of oats and cereal – I like to use rice krispies with a few bran flakes in the mix. To make it extra yummy, add a packet or two of yoghurt coated fruits (my favourites are apricots and pineapple). You will have to use a lot of cereal with this amount of toffee – approximately half or three quarters of a rice krispie packet and at least half as many oats. It may seem at first as though the amount of cereal far outweighs the toffee, but after vigorous mixing the stuff should even out and pressing it into a tray causes it to glue together satisfactorily. Cut the bars out when set. Oh, and for those still counting, these are 85 calories a bar.
I also had a go at banana loaf, using this recipe from the reliable BBC Good Food Guide (my favourite source of online recipes).
I did, however, make a few changes… as usual.
For a start, I decided that cutting down the sugar was a good move. I’ve recently bought some sweetener, and used it in a cake-like recipe to see what the result was. Suprisingly, I had to add most of the carton, and although the sweetness was right, the texture was incredibly crumbly, filling a space somewhere between scones and biscuits.
For the banana loaf, I had wised up. For 8oz of sugar, I used 6oz, plus 1oz of the sweetener to supplement. End result? No problem with the sweetness, and texture as normal.
But I also did a couple of other things.
My wonderful grandma makes a delicious banana loaf, the recipe for which I can’t find or never had, using nuts and raisins, so I wanted to have nuts and raisins in my banana loaf! A scout about the shops uncovered walnut halves at Home Bargains for £1.29, which I crushed into smaller lumps using a pestle and mortar. The best value raisins I could find were 99p “Flame Raisins” at Holland & Barrett (where I went for my yoghurt-coated fruits for the cereal bars). These had been reduced to half price.
I’m still unsure quite how they differ from conventional raisins.
The final difference made to my banana cake was raising agent. I used self-raising flour and half the amount of raising agent suggested in the recipe. Banana loaf can be quite dense and stodgy, so I wanted to give it a little extra lift (like a good bra) to make sure it went a bit further and took us longer to eat up. However, it’s important to ensure that you don’t overdo raising agent: too much can cause the cake to rise and then rupture, collapsing back down to form a kind of cakey biscuit best used for the base of a cheesecake. Worse, you can incorporate a nasty salty flavour into your baked goods, which can often surprise you with good and bad “patches”.
The addition of my extra raising agent meant that a 2 egg banana loaf was good for one long AND one ordinary loaf tin, although the smaller loaf tin was not entirely full and gave me a lower/shorter bread.
230 calories a slice.
I’ve also been thinking carefully about my breaddy snacks. A single slice of bread is 119 calories, seemingly a lot for something so staple. Bread can also leave you bloated and feeling full after rather than during a meal.
At home, we often stock up on crackers. Tesco do a 25p own brand pack and we also pick up good deals at Home Bargains, or various pound/99p stores. I eat crackers with cheese, cream cheese, hummous and even peanut butter. Sometimes I have them with salad, just with butter, or dry. They also work well with coleslaw or pates.
Another favourite of mine is oat crackers. I’ve always loved oats, and these very filling high-energy release biscuits are good with much the same things as ordinary crackers. Some people also eat them as a healthy substitute for biscuits and they can work well with sweet things as well as savoury. My preferences is for the plainer, simpler biscuits, but you can also buy oat crackers with seeds and other additions to make them more exciting.
These are part of my usual diet, but the other day I went out and bought some extras.
At 99 and 69p respectively, Ryvita Crackerbread and Abbey Crisp Bakes are 40 and 21 calories per slice, providing fun alternatives to ordinary bread. I’m yet to try the crackerbread (tomorrow for lunch I will be trying them out with guacamole dip), but the crisp bakes have already proved entertaining. I’ve used them like sandwich bread, but I’ve also used them for something creative: the bread bun around a giant courgette fritter topped with egg mayonnaise and salad: a very yummy lunch of about 410 calories – just over 1/5 of a woman’s daily recommended intake and nearly 1/6 of a man’s.
My final breaddy product is wraps. I LOVE wraps. Anything I can put in a wrap instantly becomes awesome. Obviously burritoes are the best – in my first year at uni I could cook spicy veg, dump them in a wrap with cheese and salad and have a hot lunch complete in about 15 minutes. They’re much thinner than ordinary bread and go further, complementing hot and cold food. I also use wraps with falafel, bean dishes, cheese and tomato, cheese salads, and ginger and lemon grilled or fried veg. You can have them for lunch or dinner, and if wanted supplement with rice to include more carbohydrates in your diet. I don’t have any in my freezer right now, so I can’t give you their calorie count. If you’re desperate, I’d recommend google.
For a while, the Fiance has been saying that I am taking over the web with my blog, but apparently he wants to get in on this world domination too, because he’s taken me as inspiration to go and start his own blog – on programming.
It may sound a little way removed from the wedding world, but actually it is closer than you think.
Why?
Because what he is writing about programming is going to be a wedding planning phone app tool.
Ah, I hear you prick up your ears!
Well, I’ll let his blog do most of the talking for itself. Here is some of his planning post:
[T]he number of lists and pieces of paper to keep track of everything is insane! Everything has a different timescale; different participants; costs to budget for; and so on. Basically it is one of the largest events that people are likely to find themselves organising in a non-professional context…
Ideal Version:
Keep track of budget – how much things cost and what proportion is paid for.
Keep track of RSVPs – to the main event/reception (if separate), hen and stag.
Replace all the little bitty notes – to-do lists, records, contact details, ideas.
Count-down – knowing what day is W-Day, and being able to categorise tasks by 12 months before, 6 months before, the day before, day of the wedding, whatever.
Tracking primary responsibility for tasks – is the groom handling the music? Is the bride mostly dealing with the caterers?
Be able to synchronise between multiple devices – the bride and groom, and possibly also the best man, maid of honour, ushers, even parents.
With the above, ideally be able to output something (be it a spreadsheet, Google Doc, whatever) to a computer for handling on a larger screen.
BACK UP AUTOMATICALLY – this is a big deal. The more of the critical pieces of paper that are moving onto an Android, the more careful we need to be that one inopportune crash, or getting your phone nicked, won’t mess everything up; and relying on busy people to manually backup is going to lead to some failures. I have no idea how easy this is – have to look into it later.
We’ve just received our finalised menu from our wonderful caterer, Cathy from Wrightons and are about to pay the 20% deposit on our wedding breakfast meal.
Here is menu with random associated images found on google. What do you think?
Starter
Apple and Wensleydale Pate with melba points, accompanied by mixed leaves, walnut oil and red onion marmalade.
Palette Cleanser
Blackcurrant and Creme de Cassis Sorbet
Main Meal
Confit of Duck or A Troop of Mushrooms and Walnut Wellingtons
complimented by a Sauce of Port, Redcurrant and Oranges
Baby Potatoes with Butter and Fragrant Rosemary
Garden Peas and Assorted Caramelised Root Vegetables
Dessert
Wedding Cake
Coffee and Tea with after dinner mints
I’m more than happy with this menu – and also with Wrightons. We seem to be getting an awful lot for our money, whilst other caterers couldn’t manage half so much for the same price – not after the word “wedding” at least!
Wrightons is a family butcher in Oxfordshire who do catering events, run by the amazing Cathy. Unlike all other caterers we spoke to (!) Cathy is enthusiastic about food, and has lots of ideas.
She is very enthusiastic about food, and has lots of ideas. When we told other caterers our starter and sorbet ideas they didn’t seem keen. When I explained that we wanted the main meat and vegetarian dishes thematically similar, they responded dubiously and tried to explain that what we’re imagining isn’t a very good idea and that we’ve misunderstood the catering business. Cathy, however, was not only happy to take this on board – she got excited! And started coming up with menu plan and sound advice!
We had a call with her last week to discuss our menu, and she also explained how we should get everything ready for the tables and give her a clear plan so that she could arrange everything to be set up for us – declaring it was her job to make sure everything went smoothly for us on the day. Just… wow! Not having a hotel or a package deal or wedding planner or anything, I really felt we had to do everything ourselves, and designate ushers to move every detail of decorations about, et cetera, and now, one phone call later, everything is so, so much easier…
From the Wrightons website:
We are pleased to be able to offer you a wide selection of menus for your function,
For more details please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Every menu is personalised to your requirements and we carry out the preparation with as much care as you would yourself for a special occasion.
We are fully HACCP aware and have food hygiene certificates in abundance
Cathy spent two years at catering college and, although that was some time ago, now the phrase “quality ingredients prepared with care and attention will produce quality dishes” has never been forgotten.
We do not stint on quality or quantity but we do believe in value for money.
Why not give us a call?
shapingpromises 