Catering for a Wedding! - The Planning

[vikingwolfess]

My husband and I have fallen into the trap of catering at our friend's weddings, so when a close friend of ours said that they were going to have a medieval-themed wedding at https://ancienttechnologycentre.com/ we immediately offered our service. (Plus we love catering for others)

When catering for a wedding the thing you have to keep in mind is that it's THE DAY for the bride and the groom so our first question was:

" What do you like to have"

- Pies!

" What format is the feast going to be in"

- uhm... ???

We suggested a buffet-style dinner as the feast was going to take place in the Viking Longhouse where there were no tables or chairs, plus they wanted to keep the cost down so we had no servers.

" How many people are attending"

- around 100. (in the end it's 70 adults and 13 kids)

In my mind, this would be like creating a feast for Yule Ball, which I had done for a few years now. The difference is that it would be only me and my husband doing the whole thing instead of a whole brigade. However, him being a professional chef and catering for 70 people is nothing to him, and I  - if I may say it myself – am not bad at prepping for volumes like that we can pull it off. 
We would have Friday to prepare everything, the wedding would be 1 pm Saturday and the Feast at 6 pm. Ideally, we would like to do as *little* as possible after 1 pm.

I looked at the Excel sheet I had done for Yule 2021 and decided to do a rinse and repeat, almost. That sheet is excellent to keep track of the food budget they gave us, ingredients, dishes etc.

The Menu Planning:

Based on the fact they wanted pies and a buffet-style buffet I did a proposal for them of having a selection of cheeses, smoked sausages, and cooked meats which is basically what we had for the evening meal for Yule 2021. It required little preparation and is easy for somewhat intoxicated people to eat. I got a budget of 5 pounds per head,(based on 100 attendees) which was based on the Yule Ball menu of 9 pounds, but the Bride and Groom didn't have room for that much per head in their budget so we cut it down a bit, plus we are going to have much fewer dishes. In the end, the budget ended up at 600 pounds for the whole thing - including catering materials such as serving plates, paper plates etc. 

Another thing they wanted was game meat, stews and something roasting over the fire. I could go all fancy and look for wedding stews or keep it to the theme, which is that we are going to eat in a replica of a Viking longhouse. I looked through my Viking era cookbooks and gave them a handful of suggestions regarding stews. I also had to keep in mind that not all people attending is medieval reenactors. The longhouse got a firepit in the middle where the stews and meat can be cooked in public, and the site does have dutch ovens, but we are going to bring our own.

These suggestions were:

- Boar stew (An Early mean p 78), gluten free as we removed the wheat

- Royal Horse Broth (An Early Meal, p 64), but with venison.

- Spiced meat stew (saffron, eggs and almond milk p 52)

- Vegetable based stew with added meat .

They went with the two first ones and the vegetable one as an option for vegetarians. 

Roasted meat - we decided on a leg of lamb. 

The Pies were going to be the stars of the feast and I gave them a mix of savoury and sweet options. 

Pies:

Pies of Parys

Mushroom Pie

Sweet Cheese Tarts

Tartys in Applis

Daryols (Custard tarts)

I remember Master Alexandre mentioning using pre-made pastry instead of making our own and making pie crust for 5 different pies was a big NO on our part.  Making pies is our biggest worry as they need to be blind baked, and we have decided to make individual pies. 

The menu got approved by the bride and groom, the budget got approved we were all set! 

The week before the wedding we still hadn’t got a dog sitter for two of our dogs. One of them being reactive to other dogs complicated the whole thing, so my husband decided to stay behind….

This means I have to pull this off myself, plus my two friends as a brigade. Let the panic begin!!!