Today, let’s talk wedding FOOD! It wouldn’t be a food blog without mentioning our menu, right?!
We spent a lot of time coming up with the perfect menu — Alex and I both love appetizers and small plates, so we wanted to really showcase that by having lots of bite-sized things and mini plates. Tapas style, if you will! We found a fantastic caterer that was willing to run with our vision, Steve Gemperlein of Stephen’s Kitchen & Catering. He did everything for us from our rehearsal dinner (a laid-back BBQ buffet), appetizers at cocktail hour, our amazing small-plates style dinner, setting up our cookie table with cookies made by friends and family, and an ice cream bar to finish it off for dessert!
He was extremely flexible and even made it extremely easy for our gluten free guests to find food they could eat. AND his food was delicious!
Starting with cocktail hour, here’s what our menu looked like:
Assorted vegetables with ranch dip and hummus
Dolmades (stuffed grape leaves)
Homemade cheese spread with crackers — THIS was hands down the best thing I’ve ever tasted — he creates his own cheese ball-like spread that is AMAZING.
For dinner, we actually DON’T have any pictures of the food (SHOCKING, I know), but here is our amazing menu:
Strawberry & Candied Walnut Salad
Pulled Pork Sliders
Mini Reuben Sandwiches — turkey or corned beef
Mini Quiches — Quiche Lorraine & Veggie Option
Mini Beef Wellingtons
Tomato Bruschetta on crostini
Mushroom Bruschetta on crostini
Roasted vegetable skewers
Mini Twice Baked Potato with toppings bar
It was all so perfect, and so delicious. Those mini quiches and beef wellingtons were my FAVORITE, and everyone loved the veggie skewers!
During cocktail hour, we served up two signature beverages — Blue Hawaiians for Alex, Raspberry Moscow Mules for me, along with a variety of beer and wine.
During the reception, we served up iced tea, lemonade, and coffee as non alcoholic options, and we had a pretty extensive bar menu. We tried to keep each beer and wine selection personalized to us by making choices from our favorite wineries that we have visited together and beers local to where we have lived or visited.
The complete wine list:
Riesling from Vineland Estates in Ontario, Canada — one of our favorites from our very first wine tour
Vidal Blanc from Schulze Vineyards in Burt, New York — a nice blend of whites that is perfectly crisp
Thirty Mile Point from Schulze Vineyards in Burt, New York — one of my favorite sweet wines!
Crackling Niagara from Schulze Vineyards in Burt, New York — this is the sparkling version of Thirty Mile Point made from Niagara grapes
Pinot Noir from Victorianbourg Estate in Wilson, NY — an extremely smooth red, one of the first reds I actually liked!
Cabernet Franc from Vineland Estates in Ontario, Canada — this wine we HATED the first wine tour we went on because our palettes weren’t mature enough — now we love it!
The beer:
Yuengling — because I’m from PA 😉
Molson — one of Alex’s first beers
Carlsberg — a nod to our Danish family
Magic Hat #9 — one of Alex’s favorites
Blue Moon — because it’s classic!
DuClaw Bare Ass Blonde — local to our newest location in Maryland!
Left Hand Nitro — just because it’s good
Bud Light — for the partiers
We also had standard mixers along with vodka, rum, gin, whiskey, bourbon, and Bailey’s & Kahlua.
I bought extra wine to make sure we would have enough left over to replenish our “wine cellar,” and now we also have a fully stocked bar with liquor leftovers! Time for housewarming party, haha!
Our champagne flutes are Kate Spade — love them.
The things that went the fastest were our signature cocktails — we ran out of those by the time the reception started. We had about 105 guests, and had 1.5 L of raspberry vodka for the Moscow mules, and 1.5 L and 750ml of coconut rum for the blue Hawaiians — those went quickly, so if you opt to use signature cocktails, make sure you get extra of those! Nobody minded, because we all just switched our beverages once we got the reception. No big deal!
For dessert, we opted out of traditional wedding cake and went with my absolute favorite — ICE CREAM!
Every time I go home to visit my parents, we head to my favorite ice cream place, Bruster’s! I made it one of my top priorities to make sure that Bruster’s would be one of the stars of the show on my wedding day.
We did a “first scooping” instead of a cake cutting with my absolute favorite flavor, chocolate raspberry truffle. Then the guests were released to make their own sundaes with lots of toppings — we featured vanilla, coffee, and the chocolate raspberry truffle flavor.
I got us a fancy bowl for our ice cream — it matches our champagne flutes, also Kate Spade — along with a Zerroll ice cream scoop, which is apparently the best ice cream scoop EVER. So far, so good, so I believe it!
I of course got a refill, and then Lex and I had our own moment of sharing from the ice cream bowl, while Alex looked on, haha!
Finally, here is a brief snapshot of our cookie table — filled with assorted cookies made by our loved ones. It’s a Pittsburgh tradition, so we of course had to continue it! I shared more about the cookie table in the decor, what all the pictures are for, etc!
We had lots of to go containers so you could pack up your favorite cookies and take them home with you. And of course, lots of coffee and tea to wash them down!
For more wedding posts, stay tuned!
For other wedding posts, here is the complete list:
Overview
Stationary
Getting Ready and What We Wore
Flowers + Decor
Food + Drinks