I’m writing this a fortnight after the event so am in a position of knowing what happened next if you see what I mean.

As I’ve said, I chose to do the cooking for our wedding myself, a choice that appalled many of our family and friends. I’m hoping that wasn’t because they thought the food would be crap, though as anyone who’s read my diary from the start will know, there has been some debate to that effect here on pbase before.

Basically, they thought it’d be too much given that I’m the bride and they thought it’d ruin my day. They are wrong to assume that the work would ruin my day – I have planned food that won’t be too onerous on the day. The key thing is that my experience of catered events is that the food is usually NOT what’s needed at a big do and caterers ALWAYS put the vegetarians last in the queue in terms of taste and effort.

By NOT what’s needed I mean that food for big events is often small portions of food that’s not filling. I’ve always maintained that if you’re catering for a big party where drinks will be flowing, what the guests need is “soak up food”. That means lots of carbohydrates that soak up alcohol and reduce its impact on the digestive system.

So, I’ve planned a cream tea to be served as soon as our guests are all here. That’ll be home-made scones, jam and clotted cream, served with tea, champagne and Pimms. Then the main meal, served at about 7pm onwards will consist of three courses, a meze/tapas style appetiser consisting of eight loaves of home-made bread (all different types) served with hemp oil from Devon and balsamic vinegar, olives, yigandes plaki, hummus, tsatsiki, nuts, halloumi (a nice Cypriot touch to reflect my roots), chillis stuffed with smoked Cornish cheese and crisps. The main course will give my guests a choice of beef and ale pie with herb suet crust pastry, fish pie, made with white fish and smoked fish in a white sauce with chopped hard-boiled eggs and capers, topped with flaky pastry or lentil, broad bean and Cornish Blue cheese pie, topped with shortcrust pastry. I’m going to serve the pies with tabbouleh, potato salad and coleslaw. The desserts will be a choice of this screamingly naughty chocolate mousse cake (biscuit base, milk chocolate mousse layer, white chocolate mousse layer then topped with a layer of dark chocolate mousse too), apple and cider cake or fruit salad.

I’ve made sure that the only non-vegetarian things are the beef pie and the fish pie so David, myself and our other vegetarian guests are not going to find themselves biting into something that has hidden meat or fish, something that’s happened to me all-too-often at events in the past. I’ve also ensured that the nuts are very obvious so our guest with a nut allergy can easily spot them and avoid them and finally there is no cinnamon anywhere that my sister who is allergic to cinnamon won’t expect to find it. Phew – that’s all of the allergies, food principles sorted then!

With the benefit of my hindsight, I am a little sad that most guests didn’t see the food as I’d prepared it – for example, no-one saw a whole chocolate mousse cake, complete with two hearts on top because it had been sliced in the kitchen before serving to guests.

Everything has been prepared with the utmost care and love. After all, it’s my special day and I want to be able to feel as though I’m eating like a princess and DM like my handsome prince……and that our guests will feel as though they’ve been treated to a right royal treat.

This evening, three young women who I know with the benefit of hindsight turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made regarding the wedding, have visited me to go through the schedule of events for Friday. I’ve hired in three people to heat up and serve the food, along with clear plates, serve drinks and wash up. They’re smashing – really delightful. Not only that but I now know that without them, acting under the guidance of Claire, that I’d have spent the day in the kitchen serving food myself and that would NOT have been how I’d have wanted to spend my day.

Emily, Gayle and Corrie, I salute you!