Wedding Recap: The Food

Underlying the color schemes, look and feel, and other wedding nonsense, Phil and I had a very clear goal to make sure people were well fed and nourished. Since we had split venues and the day was going to be long for everyone, we tried to have food and drink at every corner.
All photos are by Rock the Image unless otherwise stated.

During the morning ceremony, I requested pink lemonade from the golf course. Our colors were peach and coral so I hoped the pink lemonade would turn out lighter and match with the theme. Oh well, this looks really pretty anyway and at least people had a choice between water and lemonade.

I also ordered peach colored cake pops through a friend of a friend. I had 3 different flavors: red velvet, chocolate, and vanilla. We had a ton of these leftover. Not pictured is the box of miniature breakfast pastries. These were gone by the end of post-ceremony mingling.

Cocktail hour had a hosted bar and cheese and antipasto plates. The hotel really loaded these platters up. This makes the deal hunter in me happy but not so happy for the wasted food. :(

Here's the cheese platter with various cheeses. I didn't get to eat a single bite from these platters but the guests were surprisingly happy with these options. Apparently the cheeses were to die for and my coworkers couldn't stop raving about them. They look pretty darn tasty and if I were there, those raspberries and blueberries would be mine!

Picture by KB. Our starter was a salad of garden greens with a champagne vinaigrette.

Picture by me, from our tasting. Our chicken option was my favorite Italian style chicken dish of all time: chicken piccata. Read up on how much I love chicken piccata here. It was instantly my first choice for the chicken option at our wedding. At the Marriott, the piccata sauce is made with a cream sauce instead of lemon dill butter sauce. The substitute was still very good.

Picture by me from our tasting. Our vegetarian option was a vegetable wellington, a puff pastry with ratatouille style veggies inside. It looks very unappetizing and trust me, when this plate came out I was thinking, uh oh we are going to have to come back for a second tasting of a different veggie option. BUT, this is pretty darn fantastic, at least during the tasting when I had it. I almost switched my own entree option from steak to vegetarian after this tasting. I also heard a few compliments from vegetarian guests after the wedding too. Don't judge a book by its cover or a meal by its appearance. This is like a fluffy vegetarian pot pie.

The beef option was a filet mignon with wild rice pilaf. Excuse my blurry picture. We had a bunch of compliments on this steak after the wedding. Even I was amazed at how good the chef at the Marriott made a banquet order of filet mignon perfectly. I expected them all overcooked but he did a great job. AND filet is my favorite cut so yay for me!!!

For dessert, we had our wedding cake from Burlingame Cakery. Here are the pictures from our tasting. Cakery gave us really great service and allowed us a 2nd tasting for free because we loved the yellow cake with mango filling, and loved the hazelnut cake but not with strawberry filling. Our second time, we tried all 4 hazelnut cakes with different fillings. And the winning filling is....

MOCHA! Our wedding cake above has alternating layers of yellow cake with mango filling and hazelnut cake with mocha filling. Both were super good during the tasting and sadly I didn't get to eat the mango cake during the wedding. I was supposed to have the florist drop off flowers to the bakery but I had already maxed out my flower budget and thought I could just stop by the wholesale flower market the night before and pick up some flowers. This was not the smartest idea. 1) I don't have a florist business license and thus going to a wholesaler gave me no more of a discount than had I gone to a grocery store. 2) I couldn't make it to the flower market early so I had to pick from what was left and that's how you get 2 wilted flowers on your cake. I do commend the bakery for doing this design using the 2 bunches of wilted flowers I gave and a spool of ribbon. You can't really tell that I had a flower crisis the night before.

We did not save the top layer of our wedding cake to eat on our 1 year anniversary because we don't enjoy eating old cake. But we did discover that the hotel had kept our top layer in the refrigerator and we picked it up 9 days later. It tasted like hairspray. Literally, hairspray. So, if you're planning to save your cake, freeze it, don't refrigerate it.

Credits:

Pink Lemonade by Half Moon Bay Golf Links

Cake pops by Charla 

Breakfast patries by Burlingame Cakery

Cocktail hour food and entrees by Chef Vince at the San Mateo Marriott

Cake from Burlingame Cakery