Vegetaballs

You know what you don't ever seem to hear about on wedding blogs? Wedding FOOD. I don't know why that is. I mean, it's weddings and food. TOGETHER. Seriously, what's not to love? Maybe it's because it's usually the bride who's telling the story and, apparently, brides do not eat at their weddings (was I the only one who actually ate something at mine??), or maybe it's just because wedding food is so often criminally dull.

My friend Kristen has a lovely boyfriend who just happens to be a professional chef. If my boyfriend were a professional chef, I can tell you right now that I'd be a big giant fatty, but not Kristen - damn her and her skinny genes. Anyway, as head chef of an exclusive country hotel and with plenty of weddings under his belt, he could tell you a thing or two about wedding food, and has been known to express his horror at much of the cookie-cutter fare that is served up at wedding after wedding after wedding.

Your average Scottish hotel wedding menu might consist of some kind of smoked salmon starter situation, or maybe some haggis if we're being *really* Scottish. This will invariably be followed by chicken that is so dry you have to slug copious amounts of wine just to force it down (well, that's always been my excuse), accompanied by a dribble of salty gravy and some rock solid potatoes. For pudding, you're usually talking (yawn) cranachan. Much as I love cranachan - a deliciously fattening confection, consisting of masses of cream, oats and raspberries - it does get rather tiresome after the seventh wedding of the summer. Finally, the meal will be put out of its misery with a splash of coffee in a cup so small you can't actually fit your finger through the handle (tea, always go for the tea! Big cups!) and maybe, if it's a very posh affair, a wee sliver of shortbread. Oh, the excitement.

The best bit though, is the vegetables. Specifically, the seemingly exclusively wedding-related trend of Vegetables Wrapped In Other Vegetables. 

One tipsy evening, Fin and I were regaling Kristen and her boyfriend with tales of a wedding we had recently attended, and the first thing he asked was, "Were the vegetables wrapped in other vegetables?". Erm... yes, as a matter of fact, they were. "Let me guess, let me guess. Was it... a courgette with carrots sticking through the middle?" No, actually, it was a carrot with mange touts sticking through the middle. "Ah! A new development in the Vegetables Wrapped In Other Vegetables phenomenon!"

Apparently, Vegetables Wrapped In Other Vegetables are the height of culinary tackiness. They're like the food equivalent of selective colouring. In other words, just don't do it.

When it came to our wedding food, I hoped it wouldn't be yet another bland meal to be endured rather than enjoyed, a way to kill time between the ceremony and the drink-fuelled dance-fest. The golf club where we held our reception was at the end of the street where I grew up, and we chose it for all sorts of reasons - convenience, nostalgia, subsidised booze - but when it came to the food, we took a leap of faith; the most I had ever eaten there was fish and chips. But they assured us they could pull it off, and we had no choice but to trust them. 

A few weeks before the wedding, we trooped nervously along for our scheduled tasting. Oh my word, it was delicious. Beyond delicious. What's more, it was beautiful. Each trial dish had been prepared twice, in two different presentation styles, so we could pick and choose how the food would look as well as taste. Tower or stack? (Stack.) Rocket or micro-herbs? (Micro-herbs.) Chocolate sauce squiggle or chocolate sauce heart? (Heart, obvio.) We left delighted and relieved, and every day until the wedding we hummed and hawed over what we would choose on the day (that's right, we had actual choices on the day. Three choices! For each course! For 140 people! Winner!). And of course, of utmost importance, there wasn't a vegetable-wrapped vegetable in sight. 

Or so we thought.

Until the moment on our wedding day when the waiting staff streamed out of the kitchen and, with a flourish, placed steaming dishes before us. Moist, melt-in the mouth beef, creamy mashed potatoes, a rich, unctuous, gleaming sauce, and... oh god. What is that. Is that... yes it is. Oh no. It's Vegetables Wrapped in Other Vegetables.

CRINGE!!

As the guests of honour, Fin and I came face-to-face with this monstrosity before anyone else. We wolfed down our food, watching nervously as plates arrived at table after table, edging ever closer to where Kristen and her boyfriend were sitting. The tension was unbearable, the mortification almost too much. Finally, the moment arrived.

The plate is set down. He looks at it. He looks at Kristen. Then the two of them look at us. And we all dissolve into utter hysterics.

Bizarrely, it's one of my favourite memories of the day. I like to think of the Vegetable Incident as yet another example that no, things might not be exactly as you've planned them, but you know what? They'll be better.

Now, dish (pun only a little bit intended). What is the best/worst wedding meal you've ever encountered? What about your own - barbeque, food truck, four-course banquet? Mmmm, food...


P.S. Remember when Kristen and her boyfriend treated us to a night in the swanky hotel where he works? Guess what the waitress brought to our table for dessert? Two huge plates, covered in delicate whorls of caramel sauce, and bang in the middle: carrots wrapped in a courgette. I'm pretty sure the other diners thought Fin and I were having a synchronised fit when that arrived.

{All images, yet again, by the utterly-amazing-in-every-way Lillian and Leonard. Apart from the vegetable ones, clearly.}