Heating Up For The Kettle Wedding: A Pre-Wedding Dinner

On our last stop before official wedding recaps, we have our rehearsal dinner. We decided not to call it that because it was on a different day than the rehearsal and also in a different city. We called it a pre-wedding dinner.

Our schedule the week of the wedding was: Wednesday get married, Thursday rehearse for wedding, Friday have rehearsal dinner, and Saturday have wedding. It worked for us. It made everyone else think Mr. Kettle and I were crazy, but it worked for us.

The pre-wedding dinner was scheduled for a certain time. I'm honestly still not sure what time that dinner started. All I know is that as Mr. Kettle and I were getting ready, we kept getting calls from people asking where we were.

That tells us we were qutie behind schedule. I don't know how we got the wrong time, but there was nothing we could do about it at that point. We loaded up the car with our wedding thank you gifts for our parents and wedding party. There were thirty five bags. I'm not joking.

We got a separate gift for each parent, one for each host/hostess, the bridesmaids/men, the groomsmen, the maids of honor, the best men, the junior bridesmaids, the flower girls, and the ring bearers. That's thirty-five people.

At the party, when we finally arrived, the place was packed. The slight feeling of being overwhelmed that happened at our engagement party doubled. There were maybe only 20 more people at this function, but I think it's proximity to the wedding made us more anxious.

Mr. Kettle and I agreed that we were soooo glad we were already married. We greeted everyone while slowly making our way to the back of the room. They brought us food and we dined on really delicious caribbean food. The restaurant we were at is actually owned by friends of Mr. Kettle's family, so they took good care of us.

In movies, the rehearsal dinner is all about speeches and giving gifts to the wedding party and other loveliness. In our real life, there was mostly a lot of shouting because there were so many people there. At least 1/3 of our guest list, including wedding party, was at this pre-wedding dinner.

When we handed out our gifts to our wedding party, we had to track people down in a crowd of over one hundred people. That was interesting. I'll wrap this up with the only picture I have from the evening. It shows our cakes (yes, plural) along with some of the wall decorations, which were in honor of our honeymoon to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Personal Photo: Those cakes were pretty tasty!

Cake Tasting and Contract Signing

I love when a meeting with a vendor goes well. Our cake tasting with Creative Cakes went so well that we decided to sign the contract that day. Having that additional large, huge, big deal checked off the list lifted a weight from my shoulders I hadn't fully realized was there. Also, their cakes are really beautiful. Want to see some? Sure you do.

Image via WeddingBook

Image via Project Wedding

Image via Project Wedding

We arrived for our tasting promptly at 9:00 am. Apparently, the Kettle wedding party rolls large everywhere we go, cake tasting included. At each appointment, I let all the major players (Momma and Daddy Kettle, Mima and Poppa Kettle, etc.) know about it. They know they're welcome to come to anything since we're planning this big shindig all together. It ended up being 6 of us there.

Mr. Kettle and I along with both sets of parents make for an interesting time no matter where we are. There are always plenty of laughs, anecdotal stories, and fun. There's just not always a lot of listening or focusing on the task at hand. In fact, our baker's response to our spaciness (well, not mine, but most of our entourage) gave her beaucoup bonus points and let me know she'd be great with our group.

When we arrived, they were photographing cakes for a catalog or book or something. They looked so delicious. Cue mouth watering visions of cake slices dancing by. And it smelled so yummy in there. They brought us out several plates of cakes and cake mousses. They also told us anything else we want to try they'd bring out as well. We began digging in and all realized we loved their simple white cake.

I had just gotten off work, and in my defense, I work 12 hours and was really tired. So I forgot my camera, but I did take pictures on my BlackBerry!



Personal photo: Starting at the red velvet cake and going clockwise we have red velvet cake, strawberry mousse, chiffon cake, vanilla bean mousse, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, white cake, white chocolate mousse. The white dollop on top of each cake is just the basic buttercream.



Personal photo: Just another cake photo to get a better view of the other side of the plate. Drooool.

Personal photo: You can clearly see which cake and which mousse we preferred. It was all about the white cake and the strawberry, chocolate, and white chocolate mousses.

After realizing we all liked the white cake more than the chocolate, and even more than the (gasp!) red velvet, we knew that it would be okay for us to go with just plain white cake for an entire wedding cake. That's how I know that cake was good, I wasn't even thinking about fun and exotic flavor mixes anymore.

Once we had a cake flavor it was time to think filling flavor. Based on how long our cake would be out before serving, we knew mousse was our best bet, plus it was a way for me to get more whipped cream into the cake. I thought the chocolate and white chocolate would go well together and they did. Winning! On a whim, I asked for the lemon mousse, which turned out to be really lemon-y. Almost too lemon-y. But I tried it with the strawberry mousse and it was heaven; it tasted like really good strawberry lemonade.

We decided to alternate layers between the two chocolates and the strawberry lemonade. Then we had to talk design We pulled up pics of my dress on the store's iPad and showed her the details. She came up with a great drawing where each 2 of the four tiers mimicked my dress. Divine!

Personal photo: sorry for the blackberry pic, but you get the idea, right?

I don't know if you saw the line that says 135 servings in that picture. But our baker says we don't want to end up serving way more cake than is needed, especially since we're doing the cake as part of the dessert bar. We can always order an extra sheet cake if need be, but this would be just fine four our venue.

The fact that she didn't try to sell us on some 6-tier 300 serving cake really pleased us. It pushed us over the top and Momma Kettle wrote her a check. I can't wait to see how it turns out. I'm definitely adding "close up of cake details" to my must-have shots list for the photographer. Speaking of photographers, I've got a great idea for a photo guest book, but that's another post.

Yummy Yummy In My Tummy

I know that title isn't nearly as sophisticated as it should be, especially considering our venue.

Image via My Chicago Wedding

The tasting was sophisticated and classy. But the food was so good, I just wanted to dance up and down and go, "mmmmmm, yummy." In fact I still do. So there you have it.

I don't know where my camera is. I thought I'd left it at work and was kicking myself for not having it for the entire five days I was off (birthday celebration, woot!), but I'm back at work and still can't find it. So all pics from here on will be taken on my super cool new Blackberry that was a birthday gift to myself. I apologize in advance.

Mr. Kettle and I picked up Grandmother Kettle and drove out to Joliet for the tasting. There, we met Momma and Daddy Kettle, Mima and Poppa Kettle, and FSIL Grand. Yeah, we took 8 people there. I tried to take pictures, but it was an afterthought.

Personal Photo: Momma Kettle, Daddy Kettle, Grandmother Kettle

Personal Photo: Mima Kettle, Poppa Kettle, FSIL Grand

The brought us out the food and caused a bit of an issue with us that we got sorted out and hopefully won't have problems with anymore. They had some clerical issues where they neglected to tell the chef we had 8 people coming, not 4. So they only had enough food for a tasting they normally do for 4 people. We were nice and shared, but we were all still starving when we left. The silver lining to that fiasco is that the entire family is on board with having a DOC now.

But on to the food, which was so tasty. We started out with and hors d'oeuvres platter. They brought two of each.

Personal Photo: 8 different options, with 4 different sauces

Then it was time for the entree selections. I'd chosen three options, and they all looked pretty good. Mima and Poppa Kettle cut all the entrees into 8 pieces so we could each try a bit of it. The steak was really good and so we knew that would be our beef option. We had to choose between the two chicken options. We really couldn't decide!

Personal Photo: New York Strip steak

Personal Photo: Chicken Piquant

Personal Photo: Chicken Saltimbucco

Ultimately, I decided whoever was actually ordering the chicken for the wedding would choose. But almost all of us were getting the steak! Grandmother Kettle said she was getting chicken. Since she was the only one, we let her choose. She picked the chicken piquant. It will be so tasty. It has a lemon caper sauce. Yum!

Up next was the three options for cake. I forgot to tell them ivory buttercream, so they brought us pure white. Because this was my birthday weekend, I had a lot of icing. Hive, you were so right about the ivory buttercream being way better tasting. I'll make sure I choose the right icing for the wedding. Our three options were red velvet, french lemon silk, and milk chocolate mousse.

Personal Photo: I almost forgot to take a pic, but luckily it's only missing one bite.

We all loved the french lemon silk. We thought the others were just okay. That was enough to make us check out another option for cakes. Yet another thing to add to my to-do list... Yay...

They have dessert buffet options, so we tried out those. Lots of chocolate options. They also have a chocolate fountain. I want that chocolate fountain!

Personal Photo: They had chocolate versions of everything!

Personal Photo: I think there was even chocolate baklava!

They gave us wine and beer with the food. We were very pleased with the food. So now I can feel good about knowing that the dinner will be tasty and our guests will be happy.