Bride-to-be Blogger Carly: Selecting Our (Very Extensive!) Wedding-Day Menu

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Being food-lovers, Sean and I have been looking forward to our menu tasting since we first picked our venue. And, once our venue was taken over by Cescaphe we were even more excited, as we’d hear amazing things about their food!

About a week ago, a representative from Cescaphe called to schedule our menu selection appointment and we were ecstatic, though curious because we were scheduled for a 9:30am appointment. When I called back to confirm the appointment, I decided to clarify whether we’d be tasting or simply selecting, and was disappointed to find out there would be no sampling involved.

But that Saturday morning we got up, ate breakfast and walked down to their Northern Liberties location. We met with Dana, our menu consultant. (Cescaphe has expert consultants for every aspect of your wedding; these girls know what they’re doing!)

We first went over the cocktail hour menu (which left Sean and I drooling!) and chose a signature cocktail to be passed as our guests indulge (and boy do I mean indulge) in the myriad food options. The cocktail hour offerings are one of the many upgrades we lucked into with this Cescaphe takeover, and will include everything from sushi and a raw bar to a pasta station and passed hors d’oeuvres.  Next, we moved on to the sit-down-dinner courses and chose a salad, palate-cleansing sorbet (who are we, the king and queen?) followed by a few main course options. Lastly ,we picked out some selections for our dessert table (including a chocolate fountain!) and the menu was complete.  Cescaphe provided us all the menu choices in advance, and we came prepared, so this part of our meeting was quick and easy.

Then we moved on to the cake. Cescaphe offers a standard cake with three tiers for the guests, marble, chocolate chip and vanilla, and one more for Sean and I to take home.  Since we didn’t need to choose the flavors (which was fine with us, because honestly, we just don’t care that much about the cake), we looked through pictures of cakes with Dana and selected one we liked for our Big Day.

With dinner and dessert selections complete, we moved on to table linens. Originally I’d gone into the meeting thinking I wanted the table clothes to match closely with my bridesmaid dresses, but seeing the swatches, I decided that shade of green, pretty as it is on the dresses, isn’t very appetizing. So, we decided to go with white table clothes and accent napkins. Now, being a bride-to-be for the last several months I know that choosing white is never that simple (this is something quickly learned when wedding dress shopping). There are many shades of white and variations of texture. So, when a multitude of similar-looking white swatches came were presented I looked to Sean in panic and asked him to just pick one. Sean always comes through in moments like these and didn’t let me down. In less than a minute Sean picked out a somewhat-shimmery white material and our tables were set!

The final decision we needed to make that morning involved an ice sculpture. We were told, prior to the meeting, that we should look into ideas for our custom ice sculpture. And, while we weren’t really into the idea, we also knew going into our appointment that we’d be talked into having one (it seems Cescaphe strongly suggests them) Now, I’m sure ice sculptures can look very pretty but it having one just isn’t very “Carly & Sean.” However, we aren’t the type to make a fuss, so when time came to select a design, we chose something Philadelphia-esq and that was that. And while I won’t tell what we decided to go with, I will share that Sean and I had a lot of fun brainstorming silly ideas for what our potential sculpture  might be, which included a giant ice cube, and life size depictions of our college mascots: an SJU Hawk and Binghamton Bearcat.

Sean and I are really excited about our reception. We know that it is going to be beautiful and trust the Cescaphe experts completely. And while we didn’t get to taste the food at our appointment, we know it is going to be amazing and plan to get through our post-ceremony photo session as quickly as possible in order to make it for the last bit of cocktail hour, where we can gorge ourselves on oysters and spicy tuna rolls!

T- 99 days!

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