Matrimonial Matters

Apologies to my regular readers that I have been a little quiet this week. I have been busy in preparation mode for the catering of my friends, Chris and Michela's wedding. This week has been the business end of the preparations. Shopping to be done, lists to be checked and rechecked, work plans to be reviewed. The wedding is today and I'm up bright and early to complete the last few tasks before the celebrations begin. Yesterday was a big day - 9 hours straight of prep work, which among other things involved making hundreds of Polpettini (small Italian meatballs), litres of rich, spicy tomato passata, cutting and peeling over 12kg of pumpkin, making 2 varieties of frittata (almost 200 pieces), grilling about 350 asparagus spears, slicing and roasting kilos of eggplant and zucchini. I have even developed a blister on my hand from all that chopping!

You will gather from the ingredients that the food we will be serving has a rustic Italian theme. We wanted to take advantage of the beautiful fresh spring produce (which not only means the quality will be great but that the costs stay down too) The food will be served on large sharing platters, where everyone can help themselves and pick and choose whatever they fancy. Think abundant, sociable, relaxed and fun. There will not be assigned seating (just tables and chairs laid out under the trees, which will be full of glowing lanterns when the sun goes down) so people can roam around when they feel like it, socialising and grazing as they go. This is not going to be one of those stuffy, sit down affairs, that's for sure!

I have attended lots of weddings and I must admit that with very, very few exceptions they have been extremely dull, with not a lot of real creativity going on. They are usually so similar it is like a matrimonial groundhog day! It also seems to me that the more money is spent, the more stereotypic and pedestrian the event. Good taste becomes obliterated by monogrammed gilt champagne flutes, cliched menus and enough nasty nylon tulle to swathe the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And why is it that normally smart and "right on" women suddenly think that wearing a $6,000 dresses that makes you look like a giant meringue is the way to go??  Nup. I dunno either....

I think that perhaps people get led astray by bridal mags, wedding planners and businesses, spruiking their products and telling them what they "have" to have. It is a HUGE business after all. The weddings that have been special to me and that I remember, are those where the people involved have marched to their own tune and created something that is uniquely them. Chris and Michela have certainly done that and I think that their personalities are going to shine through all aspects of the wedding and the reception. Above all, I think we are all going to have a ball :)

I will be posting later in the weekend, with photos, a menu rundown and a full report from the event so you can see how it all came together, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I plan to be the queen of multitasking, as I attempt to make 4 kinds of salad dressings whilst dying my hair and also deciding what to wear......

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