Another Tuesday rolls around and I have another lovely guest blog from a TNWC Real Bride. Today Caroline who is planning an eco-friendly farm wedding is sharing her delicious sounding plans for a picnic style wedding lunch, foodie wedding favours and a pork pie wedding cake.  Yum yum!

I’d advise reading this while munching a biscuit or your own lunch or you are likely to feel extremely hungry by the end of it…you’ve been warned!

Eleven weeks to go, and the lists are getting longer, hours spend asleep are getting shorter (I keep waking up in the middle of the night remembering things I have to do – it is SUCH a good idea to have a pen and paper next to the bed to write them down!).  And the spare room is getting fuller and fuller of wedding related paraphernalia!

I thought that for this months blog post, I’d share our food plans with you, as planning and organising that bit is proving to be heaps of fun, and I think one of the most enjoyable and important parts of our day.

Gareth and I are both big foodies, and we try to buy locally wherever we can, and having a picnic lunch is a brilliant way to be able to use local suppliers and get to know lovely local food producers in our area.  It’s also a fab way to make sure the foods amazing, even on a limited budget!

Picnic Wedding Menu

So far for our menu we’ve decided on:

Sourdough and olive bread from Welbeck Bakery, ham and smoked salmon pate from The Country Victualler, lots of homemade chutney from my lovely friend Jo, bags of Pipers Crisps, cheeses from Long Clawson Dairy (Thomas Hoe Red Leicester and Stilton), Lincolnshire poacher cheese, Mike Maloneys pork pies, salads made by my brilliant big sister (we haven’t decided quite what salads yet though!), houmous, grapes, apples and celery.

I’m sure there will be a few extras added too though, and we have a lovely farm shop just down the road who I’m sure will be having lot of last minute visits from us!

This week we had a trip over to Newfield Dairy, they’re just 2 miles down the road from us and have an amazing café and ice cream parlour on their dairy farm.  They take their lovely ice cream trailer all over Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire for events and their ice cream is completely delicious.

The aim was to choose 4 flavours to have at the wedding, but we couldn’t get below 5 so we’ve  decided on vanilla, mint choc chip, strawberry and champagne, salted peanut and chocolate (which is basically like a snickers bar and tastes amazing!) and a passionfruit sorbet.  Obviously we had so sample them all, so as you can imagine, it was a hard, hard afternoon!

Adrian and Carmen are bringing their ice cream trailer along to the churchyard to greet us when we come out after the ceremony – I remember seeing a feature on TNWC blog last year with a couple who had done something similar, and I thought it was such a fab idea and the photos were brilliant.  They’ll follow us back to the farm and carry on scooping while we have pictures taken and (weather permitting) welly wanging competitions and other farmyard games!

Foodie Favours

I have been umming and ahhing about our wedding favours for months, as I wanted to give people something really personal, but also something that was a bit different, and something that wouldn’t just get put away in  a drawer and forgotten about.  So I decided that I would make the ladies a little handmade book of a few of my favourite recipes (the men are having mini pork pies as I figured they’d be delighted with anything edible!) – the hardest thing is choosing which recipes to include!

Because we decided as soon as we got engaged that we would have a relaxed picnic style lunch, we’ve had plenty of time to collect old fashioned wicker baskets to pack all the picnic ingredients in to.  Although I think you can probably  hire them, we’ve managed to find them for a few pounds in charity shops and antique shops and markets, and we thought they’d be lovely to fill and give as gifts to friends after the wedding, so they will get used again!  But things like bread boards and knives we’ll just beg and borrow from our friends and family.

Greaseproof Paper and String

We’re planning on wrapping everything in greaseproof paper with butchers string and a little label to say what’s what and where its come from.  The lovely Holly from The Swans Nest (more about her later!) has passed on details of the brilliant Little Cherry (also a TNWC business) and Pipii, who stock eco-friendly and biodegradable tablewear.  We’ve really struggled to be able to buy it in small quantities so I’m so pleased to have found them (this is why I LOVE wedding blogs and other brides-to-be sharing wedding plans – it saves sooooo much Google searching online!!).

I’ve already recruited lots of friends to come over on the Thursday night before the wedding to help wrap everything up for us.  We’ve borrowed a refrigerated van to pack everything in overnight as out little fridge definitely wont squeeze it all in, I think picnic food for 100 is going to look like A LOT of food when its all packaged up!!  Charlie’s (who runs The Natural Wedding Company) sister Izzy who did the beautiful illustration of us for this blog has kindly let me use the drawing to make stickers to use to seal everything, which will add a really lovely personal touch too.

Pork Pie Wedding Cake

We’ve just decided to have a pork pie cake too after finding an AMAZING picture of one on the TNWC blog (I don’t think ours will be quite as impressive!)  – so we thought we’d cut the cake before we eat so everyone can have a big chunk of pork pie on their table – it makes me hungry just thinking about it!

For desserts after lunch we have asked some of our baking friends to bring along a pudding, so we have heaps of offers already including baked cheesecakes, roulades, chocolate brownies, blackberry crumbles, apple cakes, pavlovas and cookies to name but a few – so I think there should be plenty!

Wedding Guestbook Quilt

Another brilliant things that happened this month is I had an email I had from Charlie at The Natural Wedding Company that she forwarded on from a really lovely lady Holly, who has just set up her new business www.swansnestweddings.com and creates beautiful keepsake quilts and other handcrafted loveliness.

She has had the most brilliant idea of making wedding guestbook quilts as a wedding keepsake, and got in touch to offer to make one for Gareth and I.  Holly got married herself last year, and her wedding was SO similar to how we’re planning ours – it was lovely to chat with her and pick her brains!!

Basically how it works is Holly sends over a lovely vintage suitcase full of pretty, vintage pieces of fabric along with fabric pens, and wedding guests write their message on them.  Holly then uses the fabrics to create a quilt – I am SO excited about it, and love the thought of having something that’s permanently on display to remind you of your wedding day.  I will post more pics and details next month!

I feel hungry just writing up Caroline’s blog post for you!  And I can’t wait to see their take on the pork pie wedding cake plus that gorgeous quilted wedding guestbook that the lovely Holly has kindly offered to make them.  Plus, I have Holly’s beautiful wedding coming up really soon on the blog!

Do check back on Thursday to hear from who’s sharing all about the style and flowers for their homepsun fiesta wedding.

Images: (1) Illustration by Izzy Burton; (2-4) Brides own pictures; (5) Little Cherry; (6) Steve Gerrard with Emma Case via Rock My Wedding