Bride-to-be blogger Leslie: Tasting Number One

This past weekend was a big weekend in terms of wedding planning. My parents actually came all the way up from Virginia to spend the weekend crossing a few items off our wedding to-do list!

We are getting married at Greystone Hall in West Chester and there are a few (three) different options for caterers for our venue. I have been talking with all three of the caterers, discussing menu options and pricing so I was excited when I found out I was going to be able to do some tastings with each of them, too!

On Saturday afternoon we all headed down into Center City to attend our tasting with Jeffrey Miller Catering. It was so exciting to walk into the room and see the table all set up for us! My parents and my fiance’s mom joined us to taste potential wedding meals, and we were all excited to enjoy the meal together.

To start off the tasting we were presented with a wide variety of appetizers. When I was initially sent the menu to start looking at options, I was definitely overwhelmed! There were more than six pages to choose from and it’s hard to narrow down your choices. For the wedding we will have eight or so appetizers for our guests, but for the tasting we only tried a few. I am not sure yet what we are going to keep and what we are going to change, but everything was really tasty and fresh!

Here few of the things we tried:

1. The Love Note (Love the name!), which is a phyllo envelope filled with Asian pear, goat cheese and caramelized shallots. This was really yummy, and a great vegetarian option.

2. Coconut Beer Battered Shrimp Served With Sweet Chili Sauce.

3. A favorite for the day was the Cheese Steak Spring Rolls: Original South Philly cheese steak with sauteed fried onions and Cheese Whiz encased in a crispy spring roll wrapper, served with spicy ketchup. I like the idea of having something local to Philadelphia for our many out of town guests! It’s such a cute choice.

4. For a chicken option we enjoyed the Indonesian Chicken Satay, skewered and served with a spicy peanut dipping sauce.

5. For something a little different we tried their Vietnamese Summer Roll: Shrimp, crispy lettuce & carrot scented with mint & cilantro and served an a fresh rice wrapper.

We also tasted a few different dinner options, which were set on different kinds of plates. I believe we are planning on having a steak, fish and vegetarian option. We are still finalizing what we want, but I know my fiance and dad were loving the steak and I was really enjoying the salmon!

The next part was what I was looking forward to all week: the cake!

I had really been hoping we were going to taste the wedding cake. I had sent the caterers some ideas that we were thinking about for the final cake and I was so excited when we were able to taste one of our choices — a marble cake with mocha cream filling and vanilla buttercream. We were brought out what would be the top layer of an actual wedding cake, and the cake itself was so good, it was insane! It was fresh and moist and the icing was amazing. I loved it!

It was so fun to spend the afternoon in the city enjoying some amazing food and talking out some details for the upcoming wedding. Charles and I both had a lot of fun, and it definitely got us even more excited for our Big Day! It will be hard finalizing the decision for the food, but hopefully we will be able to choose everything soon.

If you have any words of wisdom for us when narrowing down and choosing our menu for the wedding, please share them! Anything you wished you would have had on the menu or something that wasn’t worth it? I would love to hear what you think about choosing menu items!

If you would like to see my catering experience from start to finish I have detailed pictures in this post.

For more information on my wedding planning and healthy living for brides, please check out my other blog, And Her Little Dog Too.

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