wedding theme?/food

Not sure if you can call ours a theme wedding, but we made a concerted effort to highlight the three places that Poe and I consider to be our homes throughout our wedding weekend. Specifically, I grew up in Chicago (also the location of the wedding), Poe grew up in Baltimore, and we met and currently live in North Carolina (both Winston-Salem-- site of Wake Forest Univesity and Charlotte are close to our hearts).

The theme really grew out of the planning of the reception meal. We knew we didn't want anything formal. We aren't formal people, and while we love good food, didn't want to spend a small fortune on anything that people would either not recognize, not enjoy, or not find filling enough. So we started thinking about all of our favorite foods. Not surprisingly, none of it was healthy. But we found that most were our favorites because of their associations with the places we love (and consequently, we can't get very often). From there grew our meal; 3 buffet stations highlighting our favorite foods from our favorite places.

Here's the menu (printed on kraft paper and displayed on the tables in Ikea pedestal frames):

 Each of the buffet tables were decorated with prints I had commissioned from an artist on Etsy, as well as vintage postcards from each location.

(Chicago)

(North Carolina)

(Baltimore)


At the end of the night, we also had a vintage hot dog cart roll out....as if we needed more food. When we got engaged, the hot dog cart was the first thing on my "must have" list, sadly.

I'll mention too that we used C Catering Boutique, who were a pleasure to work with. Given my past in event planning, I'm sure I wasn't an easy client, but they were responsive and were great partners in the whole process. The food the night of the wedding tasted just as good as it did at our tastings, although admittedly, I barely ate anything because I was way too amped up. (Drinks, however, went down real easy.) They knew the venue well, and were incredibly helpful to me, as I didn't have a hired event planner. I trusted their judgment and they delivered on everything they promised.

The one thing they didn't make in house was the cake, but they did coordinate with another vendor on our behalf. Cake was on our "not important" list, because I had always envisioned doing a dessert bar instead. We just wanted a small cutting cake, but once we tasted how good it was going to be, our families convinced us to do something a bit bigger than we originally planned.

We also got the cake topper on Etsy.

As for the dessert bar, I can give all the credit to my mom. Growing up, we spent a lot of time together in the kitchen baking. I'm glad I have seemed to inherit her skills, though my bod isn't as thankful. Regardless, I have a serious sweet tooth, and wanted to share some of my mom's specialties with all the wedding guests. I asked her to make 3 things. If you know my mom, you won't be surprised that this is what "3 things" turned into:

It was probably closer to 10 things on that table. Our family doesn't do anything half-assed, haha.


Back to the locations--- We also made sure to include snacks from each location in the hotel gift bags. They included goetze's caramel creams (from Baltimore), world's finest chocolate (from Chicago), and lance crackers (from North Carolina).

We're pretty lucky to be from such awesome places!!!