Our Vegetarian Wedding

I’m currently working on wedding photo albums as Christmas gifts for our families. So, I figured that I’d write a bit about our vegetarian wedding.

Immediately after Josiah proposed, we started looking for a venue for our wedding. I hadn’t even thought about the food at this point, as I was so excited about getting married. Our first and final stop on our hunt for a venue was to Watson Homestead in Painted Post, NY. The woman that we met with explained that they only worked with one caterer. She said that her daughter was married there the year before and that all of the food was vegan. That fact, along with the beautiful chapel and reception hall, and we were sold.

When we met with the caterer a few weeks later, though, we discovered that he hardly knew what the word vegan meant. He did explain that he could do a vegetarian meal, though. We live in a semi-rural area of New York so, finding another caterer who could prepare a delicious vegan meal for 160 people for a reasonable price just wasn’t possible. However, we made sure that there were plenty of vegan options.

The menu included eggplant rollettes, vegetarian lasagna, bow tie pasta with marinara or alfredo sauce, steamed vegetables, tossed salad, a potato bar with vegan garlic smashed potatoes, and dinner rolls. We made sure that every item that would have had butter on it, went without it. I was disappointed that the entire meal couldn’t be vegan, but I was still happy that much of the food was prepared vegan and all was at least vegetarian. I mean, when was the last time that you had dinner with all of your family and friends and no one ate meat? Having the entire meal prepared vegan would have been ideal, but for it to be vegetarian was still a victory.

We received many compliments from our guests on the food. Thy all said that they didn’t even miss the meat. I’m a strong believer in food as activism and if we showed many people that a meal doesn’t need meat to be delicious and satisfying - I’m okay with that. Oh, and it turned out to be cheaper than serving meat. So, that’s another nice little perk too.

I remember right after we had decided on the menu, we were at a family Christmas party. One of my aunts asked “Are you worried about your guests missing eating meat?” My dad’s response was “Who gives a shit? They aren’t the ones paying for it!” Gotta love him! We got some jokes here and there but overall, everyone was really supportive and understanding of our decisions.

The beautiful cupcakes!

The best part of the meal was most certainly the vegan carrot cake cupcakes. They were baked by Cup of Cake in Corning, NY and they were amazing! As I’m writing this, my mouth is watering with the memories! You absolutely couldn’t tell that the cream cheese frosting wasn’t the real thing. After the whole party was over, we raided the kitchen to get more. We couldn’t get enough.

The final animal friendly thing that we did was during the dollar dance. We didn’t like the idea of a dollar dance at first. To us it seemed too close to begging for money for our tastes. All the guests had already come to the reception with wrapped gifts. We didn’t need to take any more advantage of their generosity. Instead, we asked that the DJ announce that the money would go to our local animal shelter. People seemed to really love the idea. I was told that some people didn’t want to leave until they had a chance to donate. Even the bartender pitched in with a donation. We ended up raising a nice wad of cash for a good cause and had a chance to chat with many of our guests while doing it.

Throughout the whole wedding planning process, I really learned a lot. I never fully understood how personal the event is. My heart and soul went into every detail of that day and there isn’t a thing I would change about it. I know some other vegans might criticise the fact that we served cheese, but we did the best we could with the resources we had. I’ll always cherish the memories that we made.... even if Josiah did try, unsuccessfully, to smash cupcake in my face.

He started the battle; I finished it.