Vegan Wedding Catering

We're celebrating our 4th wedding anniversary this month, so I thought it fitting to share a catering success story: our wedding!

My husband and I are foodies. When we began planning our wedding, we had the same challenge we have when we go on vacation: more food we wanted to share than meals in the day. The solution: We celebrated our wedding over a week of meals with close friends and family (some from out of town.)

We welcomed our out of town guests with Japanese sushi and grilled (robata) plates at Masu, and then whisked away the wedding party and moms for manicures at the Aveda Institute across the street.

Instead of holding a dance after the wedding, we opted to go swing dancing earlier in the week at the Wabasha Street Caves and fuel our dancing with Cambodian stir fry dishes from Cheng Heng. Their tamarind stirfry dish (chha kaim som) is my favorite with a sour, savory sauce served over peppers, onions, broccoli, pea pods, tofu and thai basil. My hubby's fave is the lemongrass and peanut stirfry (chha kroeng).

We had the wedding rehearsal dinner at our favorite date night spot, Little Szechuan, sharing green beans, spicy fried tofu, and more. We've celebrated our anniversary here ever since.

For the wedding day meal, we wanted an all vegan meal that all our friends and family would enjoy. Chowgirls Killer Catering is a local company that offers seasonal vegan friendly options. We did a taste test with my parents and a friend sampling a lot of the vegan offerings, and I'm glad we did! I was adamant pre-tasting that I didn't want a simple salad with green goddess dressing (vegans aren't rabbits!) I also thought we'd likely go with vegan versions of familiar foods like mac and cheese bites or meatless meatballs. In the end, we decided to go with classic delicious food that "wasn't too weird". Roasted veggies, dips and pates, root vegetable quinoa salad, and yes...that herbaceous, amazing green goddess dressing on a simple salad. They snuck it in our tasting, and I remember feigning displeasure at the hard sell on the salad, until I took a bite. The day after our wedding I was scraping every last drop of the leftover dressing on a salad.

Of course, what wedding is complete without the cake? We're fortunate to have an amazing baker at our local coffee shop, Groundswell, who really outdid herself with five vegan cupcakes: pumpkin with cream cheese frosting, banana with peanut butter frosting and chocolate ganache, champagne with frosted cranberries, spice cake with apple compote, and chocolate with chocolate ganache and a coconut macaroon. Our local baker beat out Chicago Diner and a local coop in our cake test.

Thanks for sharing this walk down memory lane with me, and if you're local I hope you'll support some of the amazing businesses that helped make our wedding week special.