Locally sourced wedding meal details from real bride Vicky

A weddig topic close to my heart – food! In the past I think wedding food has often been an after-thought, but more and more it’s becoming something that couples really put a lot of thought into. Here are Vicky and Steve’s plans for their wedding feast!

>> View Vicky and Steve’s DIY village fete wedding here <<

Over to Vicky…

A hog roast with handmade cutlery packages for guests

The food and drink we’ll be serving at the wedding is at the forefront of my mind at the moment as we firm up numbers and start to make the final purchases.

We decided from the very start that we wanted to keep it quite simple to help save the budget for other areas and keep the day relaxed. In the end we settled on a cream tea reception followed by a hog roast is the evening.

The hog roast was easy to organise as our best man’s father-in-law does these as a sideline to his farming. A quick chat on the beach, followed by an impromptu dance lesson (only in Devon!) and we had booked a hog and ram roast with a few roast potatoes thrown in the bottom for good measure. Excellent!

We’ve put together a little bag for each guest to pick up before they eat which have a napkin, wooden cutlery and a hand wipe in. They have been decorated with a personalised stamp which we found on Etsy.

A cream tea wedding reception

After that came the trickier task of finding a company to do the cream tea for us. Lots of the caterers we approached seemed keen to sell us their idea of what we wanted rather than what we wanted. A simple cream tea became a full-scale afternoon tea. It all sounded amazing but it wasn’t what we wanted.

Thankfully a friend then recommended the lovely Hannah and Sima from The Kitchen Table in Totnes. They have been brilliant, sticking to what we wanted, answering many questions about scone sizes (seriously, how did I turn into someone who worried about the size of a scone?) and even talking us down on quantities.

Even better they are advocates of using local produce, which fits our day perfectly. They will provide the mini pasty canapés, sit down cream tea and all the salads and rolls for the evening do, plus some vegetarian options. Their food looks beautiful and I can’t wait to try it all.

Victoria sponge wedding cake

They also put us in touch with Queen Bee Cakes, who make the most amazing wedding cakes and are a supplier on The Natural Wedding Company. Sadly they were already booked for our weekend leaving us with no choice but to try and re-create something similar ourselves.

So my lovely Mum and Aunt have gamely taken on the challenge of making the cake. From reading about other weddings I know this is quite common but my Mum is not the most expert of cooks, once serving up a dessert of sausage pie and custard – don’t ask!

Her cakes, however, are normally really good and with the amount of practice runs she’s been doing I’m sure it’ll be great, even if we won’t fit into our dresses any more! She will be making two sponges, which will sit on top of a fruit cake which my Aunt is busy soaking with brandy.

I’m planning on adding a liberal scattering of flowers and icing sugar to make it look pretty! Hopefully it will eventually turn out something like these cakes.

Dessert table of ice cream and popcorn

For dessert and snacks we will be having a ‘help yourself’ ice cream, popcorn and sweets table. I really fancied having a vintage ice cream bicycle but didn’t feel we could justify the cost. In the end we went straight to our local ice cream company, Salcombe Dairy, and asked if we could buy tubs direct from them and hire their little hawking fridge which we’d seen at village fairs.

Rather brilliantly it turned out that if you bought the ice cream and the trolley was available it was yours free for the weekend! To encourage our guests to tuck in, I’ve made a little usherette tray which we’ll get someone to carry round handing out the ice cream. I’ve also made one for the popcorn and one for the sweets.

Our neighbour works for Portlebay Popcorn (very handy!) and will be getting us our favourite flavours, Ginger and Wasabi, Crispy Bacon and Maple Syrup, and Very Berry.

Homemade sloe gin

Steve has also been getting in on the action making his own sloe gin for the day. He’s been working on it since October and it’s now sat in a cupboard ready and waiting. This will be put into a glass drink dispenser on the bar ready for people to help themselves to.

Finally we have been buying wine for the bar since we got engaged and now have a grand total of 114 bottles! We are getting the beer direct from The Dartmoor Brewery and the cider from a little farm outside of Exeter who still make it in a 350 years old cider press. Plymouth Gin will round off the local theme nicely and our table water is coming from a village about 10 minutes away.

Hopefully it will all go down well with our guests and everyone will come away full up and a little merry!

>> View Vicky and Steve’s DIY village fete wedding here <<

Images: (1) Brides own photo; (2) The Kitchen Table; (3) Brides own photo; (4) James Hooker, Brimblecombe Cider