The Food Issue
In the past two years I've been to 10 weddings and, I mean this in the nicest possible way, I can't remember what I ate at any of them.Well, apart from the lamb that I had forgotten by return invitation to opt out of - even though it had been hand picked by the father of the bride and brought straight in off the Welsh hills to the Cotswolds at great cost.
But the reason I remember that is because I didn't eat it and the bride and groom have never let me live it down.
That aside, I'm not at all convinced that wedding food, apart from the cost, should really be thought about for all that long in the first place.
I can always remember the bride walking in, I remember the laughing, the crying (for joy, of course - apart from that one time, of course, ut we don't speak of that), meeting people that you swear you'll be in touch with again. I remember the part where someone finds a spare hat and starts singing Elvis (usually David) and I always remember speaking to the parents of the bride and groom and telling them how wonderful their children are - whether I actually know them or not.
But the meal? I can never remember the meal. It's simply there to line the stomach as far as I'm concerned. It's just something to make sure you sit down and stop drinking copious amounts of free booze, thereby ensuring you're not unconscious by 7.30pm.
So, the collective - and fairly immediate - decision that my fair fiance David and I have taken, when confronted with (all organic!!) menus A, B and C was that we should definitely opt for the simplest fair and go for A. Which, not-so-coincidentally, is also the cheapest.
But when I say "cheapest" this doesn't actually mean "cheap". We've basically ordered tomato soup (slow roasted with basil apparently), chicken tarragon (and grain mustard sauce) and creme brulee, with vegetarian AND vegan options, for God's sake. This takes the cost to just over £6,000 a head. Then there's all the alcohol, nibbles and what not, at only £130,000 for each person there for the day.
We must consider this is before we even take into consideration the evening buffet, which will make the total cost of feeding and watering our nearest and dearest - and those that we put up with for the sake of harmony - a cool million of your English pounds. Or thereabouts. Of course, I'm jesting. But it does feel that while I save and scrimp and face the prospect of eating beans on toast for six months of next year to pay for it all, the quality of the meal I have convinced myself we will receive compared to how much is costs, is being thrown into the harsh light of reality.
Even though these financial cut backs may result in starvation rations and therefore svelte gorgeousness, there really should be some sort of national outcry about it all because in all seriousness, its costing us £40 a head for 110 at the sit-down meal just for the food. I mean, you think we'd get a discount for a block booking or something.
And, although it's sad to admit that I can think this and go ahead with the whole thing anyway, I almost guarantee the soup will be luke warm, the chicken will be chewy and the creme brulee will not have a crunchy, crackled topping, but a soggy, slightly warm brown sugar coating. To compound this tragedy, not one person at our wedding will even notice what they are shovelling down their gobs as they battle to talk to great Aunty Josie about her thimble collection and how they held weddings in her day.
On the top table, there will equally be no relief from relatives bemoaning the state of the wedding industry for me. My parents have long revelled in the fact that the nosh for their own wedding in 1983 cost £50 and that the whole wedding and honeymoon cost about £200.
Never having been the most conventional, my mum had made two massive vats of chilli, which was served with garlic bread and salad and everyone, including an eight-year-old me, piled back to our house following the ceremony for what has gone down in family folk lore as The Greatest Wedding Of All Time - and so cheap, "wasn't it, dear?"
But then, it's not all bad, I guess. Many of my closest friends that have been through the whole thing have also said that there's a moment when everyone is sat down and you look around and see them eating, drinking and laughing.
Then, apparently, you think that it's been worth every penny, every annoying twitch you've developed and the fact you've gone without Chanel lipliner for more than a year (in the case of one particularly stricken bride).
I'm currently hoping I'll have one of those moments so that I'm left with the all-important sweet aftertaste that makes the gorging in the first place so much more palatable.
posted by Sadie Kenshall @ 12:46 PM
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