Our wedding caterers were the absolute bomb diggity. They were incredible, amazing, wonderful, and all the superlatives you can think of.
We chose Secret Dumpling Club (keep up to date with their events on Facebook here) by accident to start with. You see, Holland is actually by brother’s best friend and I hit her up for some food advice a few months ago. I was beginning to get disheartened by wedding catering options and the huge costs associated with them and lack of flexibility and choice.
What started as a conversation about food somehow morphed into Holland and Joel offering to run the pizza oven in the evening for us, to then catering our entire wedding. I’m still not quite sure how it happened, but I’m forever grateful. It was the best.
OK, let’s talk about the food.
Initially, when wedding planning, Raj and I had grand ideas about a full lane of street food featuring all of our favourite things. The dream was epic, if a little unrealistic given the cost of these things. That’s the thing about dreams, that don’t do budgets first do they?
So to pick our food for the day we had to find a nice balance between food that we loved, food that was practical to make and serve, food that was going to please as many people as possible, and food that went with the vibe of the day.
Raj and I are feeders so we absolutely didn’t want anyone to go hungry throughout the day. We are also keen foodies so we wanted something that was very ‘us’.
Popcorn and Prosecco Reception
Much like many weddings our wedding breakfast/main meal wasn’t scheduled to be served until later in the day, around 3pm. But, as there needed to be a break between ceremonies for the wedding barn to be turned around and set-up, we wanted to hosted a short drinks reception.
Initially I suggested a prosecco hour. We knew that some people were going to be travelling a long way to the venue so they might be hungry. I flippantly said something like “oh, we could just have a Popcorn and Prosecco Hour, I do love a bit of alliteration.”. I was joking of course. Normals folks serve fancy finger food. But Raj jumped on it. He bloody loves popcorn.
So that was that. We were to have popcorn and prosecco between our ceremonies.
Although, it was actually a French sparkling wine that we bought on a booze run to France two months ago. And we decided we needed something a little more than popcorn. After a bit of mulling we decided to also serve samosas for our guests. We made a large order with an Indian restaurant in Leicester who delivered it directly to our venue (along with a few other bits – more on that in a sec).
The Popcorn and Prosecco reception consisted of a large table, and on each end sat two large baskets filled with popcorn – one salty, the other sweet – which we ordered from eBay along with retro looking paper bags for serving.
The Wedding Food
After the second wedding ceremony our guests finally seated in the big reception barn ready for the wedding breakfast.
We had four ‘food stations’ at each corner of the room and the groomsmen brought out all of the food on gorgeous white and blue enamelware serving dishes ready for the guests to help themselves to the food they wanted to try.
We served the following at our wedding breakfast:
- Slow-Roasted Lamb
- Satay Chicken (plus, Plain Chicken for the kids)
- Sumac Roasted Aubergine with a Goat’s Milk Yoghurt Sauce
- Roasted Cauliflower with Celeriac Puree
- Mixed Green Salad with Edible Flowers
- Chana (Chickpea Curry)
- Rotli (Indian flatbread)
The majority of the wedding food we served was vegan. About a fifth of our guests are either vegetarian or vegan, and once we started brainstorming ideas we actually only need one or two meat dishes anyway. As a summer wedding we wanted lots of veggies and salad, and after lots of conversations with our caterers this is the selection we settled on.
First of all, let me just say, that as a bride, I barely ate anything. I was either too busy chatting to guests, or my stomach was still to tied-up in nerves/adrenalin to be able to actually get that much food into it.
However, every single person I have spoken to about our wedding has said that is some of the best food they’ve ever had! I’m so pleased how happy my guests were with it all.
I was particularly happy with the slow-roasted lamb, it was incredible. It was succulent, flavoursome, moreish. One of my favourite things to eat anyway, and this was just perfect.
The Chana and Rotli was made at the Indian restaurant in Leicester and delivered to our venue along with the samosas, as mentioned above.
Everything else was lovingly crafted by our lovely wedding caterers, Secret Dumpling Club. Go check ’em out, they’re awesome and lovely and brilliant.
Pizza Oven
And, as if they didn’t work hard enough… they then set up a pizza oven in the evening.
As the dance floor got going our guests were treated to pizza service out in the courtyard. Holland and Joel spent several hours rolling out fresh dough and making amazing pizzas to order, all served up in cardboard pizza boxes. It was ace!
The pizza oven was so popular that some of the family got involved as well, I’m sure I saw my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and step-Dad working the pizza oven by taking orders and serving guests. It was such a sociable part of the day, I think everyone loved it.
We served both savoury and sweet pizzas, including a delicious Nutella pizza! I managed about 3 mouthfuls of my little sister’s before I was dragged back onto the dancefloor.
Needless to say, our guests we very well fed. The food was fun, it was different, it was a fusion, and most importantly it tasted incredible. I can’t tell you just how incredible Holland and Joel were, they were an integral part of my wedding day and made it a total joy.
I’m proud to recommend my wedding caterers Secret Dumpling Club – they’re available for all kinds of event catering, and have had all of my guests raving about the food ever since.
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Photos by Simon Brettell and Secret Dumpling Club