Where to begin???

Hello wedding-web-world! I'm back from my holiday hibernation and am back with a wedding ferociousness! RAWWWWR!

The holiday season was a roller coaster of emotion as far as the wedding planning was concerned. Filled with wonderful things like my mom buying us engraved Vera Wang toasting flutes and the matching cake serving set, engraved with our future Mr. X and Mrs. X names. (I cried, my mom cried and then we laughed at each other. It was a beautiful wedding planning moment that I highly recommend!)

My pictures:




The pretty pictures I found online:




But it was also full of the make-you-want-to-tear-your-hair-out-and-pound-your-fists-into-the-ground moments, such as a certain issue concerning our guest list (which blew up in the worst way to day. It seriously makes me sick to my stomach how presumptuous and rude our own families can be at times.)

This past weekend, however, was my favorite of our holiday hibernation; we spent the whole weekend in Carmel, planning our wedding together. I can honestly say that it was one of the best weekends of my life. :)

So I'll begin the story of the world's best wedding planning weekend with the food (I'm just going to go ahead and throw that whole chronological order thing out the window!).

OMG - The. Food. Put simply: to die for.

They brought out some really cute little aritsan rolls (Mike laughed at me when I took a picture of the rolls. I told him he'd be thanking me in a few months when he forgets if there was a bread starter or not!!)



We started by choosing a first dish:

Romaine lettuce with blue cheese, cranberries and walnuts, and basil vinaigrette. I could have eaten this baby all day long.

Runner up: Baby spinach and butter lettuce with hazelnut vinaigrette, toasted pine nuts and pears. Love the dressing, but when they brought it out I thought the pear was nigiri. I looked at Mike and asked if sushi came with the salad - nope that's the pear. Not pretty, but tasty.

Loser: Cream of Broccoli soup = yuck. Bland and kind of ugly. We both veto'd it.

Then we move on to the entree's that we choose. We weren't positive that these were the entrees that we were going to serve but they both were delicious!

Chicken Roulade stuffed with Artichokes and Mushrooms in a Roast Garlic Sauce with scalloped potatoes and spring vegetables. Oh this was soooo tasty. The chicken was moist and the gravy and the stuffing were some complimentary and sweet and savory at the same time. The scalloped potatoes could have been served on their own they were so good, perfect marriage between cheesy gooeyness and starchy potato. Delish!

This was the best, and yes I saved it for last.

Crab Ravioli with Prawns, Tarragon Sauce and Julienne Vegetables. The inside of the ravioli was delightful, it was the freshest crab, the texture of the crab inside the ravioli was such a wonderful surprise. The tarragon sauce was unbelievable, it had the slightest hint of lemon and it felt so perfect for a spring/summer Memorial Day weekend wedding meal. Love love love.

And that's all.

What? Yes, La Playa Hotel is making our cake too. Yes, we did a cake tasting. Oh you want to see the pictures from that too, oh, well, um, I sort of don't have any cake tasting pictures to share, because I, um, sort of didn't take any because I was too excited about tasting the cake. And it was gooooooooooooooddd!!

I'll post more about the cake another day, it's not really wedding food but more of a wedding art piece that happens to be edible.

Is your mouth watering? Mine is!! Did you enjoy your caterer tasting as much as I did? :)