Wedding Reception Food

Adam's sister (Adam is my daughter, Erin's, husband) got married on Friday and Susie and I catered the wedding reception. We love catering events because we absolutely love the details involved in making an event delicious and lovely. Ya...we love it...but I wouldn't want to do it every weekend since the effort and work required are enormous! We did have a ball, though, and not only love every splendid detail but we love working together.

First of all we glued pearls in the bride's wedding colors to the tops of skewers. The wedding was lovely shades of pink, peach, cream and white. So lovely.

Here is Susie at our station for threading the Salad Kabobs.

This is in the kitchen at Bella's. Have you seen the ballroom in Bella's in Lindon? Lovely.

We peeled most of the peel off of the largest cucumbers we could find. Just peeling them would have been much easier, but we intentionally peeled slowly and carefully to leave behind just enough green to make them look splendid. Susie said they looked artistic. Ahh, yes. Artistic.

We then cut 1/2 inch slices and cut the slices in half. Turned them on the edge and used them as the base for our Salad Kabobs. They looked so wonderful standing up.

Cheese tortellini on top, black olives (wish we had used the large ones), artichoke hearts, grape tomatoes, all standing in a half circle chunk of cucumber.

Drizzled with Balsamic Dressing just before we took each platter out to the table.

We put the dressing in a squirt bottle to make the drizzling job easy.

Susie at our Sandwich Kabob station. We prepared as much as we could in advance. Earlier in the day we cut cheese and garlic breadsticks in fourths, threaded ham and cheese onto toothpicks, and cut large dill pickles into 4 spears and then each spear into chunks to create the cool triangle pickle chunks we topped them with.

Our finished Sandwich Kabobs. Aren't they splendid?! We made 400.

We made tiny little fruit and cream tarts. We started with the crusts. Made 400 of them 2 days before the wedding. Took us several hours but we so enjoy talking and being together that it was completely enjoyable. Well...the first 300 hundred were anyway. You really shouldn't have to do anything more than 300 times. ha ha ha...but we made 400. 

The filling is cream, lightly sweetened whipped cream. Real cream, stabilized with one envelope of gelatin for every 2 cups of cream.

Topped with berries. We used raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.

The bride requested food on both sides of the table. We used wrought iron displays on this side and crystal cake pedestals on the other. I used my collection of white plates in the center display and Susie's peach plates on the sides. So pretty.

The picture really doesn't show how pretty it turned out.

Fruit and cream tarts in the middle on both sides.

Salad Kabobs on one end.

Sandwich Kabobs on the other end.

Susie and me in our ever so cute matching aprons.

If I had one thing I could say to every wedding guest (and of course, I would not be considered rude to say it) it would be, "This is not an all-you-can-eat-dinner-buffet. Proper wedding etiquette is to take one of each thing offered." Sheeeesh!

How many men did I see piling their plates as high as they could....as their embarrassed wives said, "Hon, it's a wedding reception!" as he piles on more and puts one in his mouth and says, "Ya. So? I'm hungry."

Sigh.