Wedding in Jamaica-Celebrating in the UK

My younger son (YS) and his lovely fiancee (DIL) got married this year in Jamaica-just the two of them.

My husband and I were delighted that they were having the wedding they wanted even though we would not be there. However, there was no way I could let their wedding day go by without doing something to celebrate at home, so I decided we would have our own celebration on the day.

I wanted it to be a small but special affair and decided that 8 would be a good number to have around the table.  Everyone then gets a chance to interract with everyone else without it breaking off into smaller groups which tends to happen with larger numbers.

Having a lunch seemed the best idea as it would leave us free to spend as much time as we wanted together.

I sent emails out months in advance asking my guests to save the date and then a month or two beforehand I sent out ‘formal’ invitations:-

I wanted to ensure that I could enjoy the day myself so in planning the menu, I was careful to choose things that I could prepare in advance.

Here is the menu:-

With the exception of the salad and runner beans, every course could be frozen ahead of time:-

• The cheese souffles were the twice baked variety which can be frozen after the first baking
• Beef bourgignon needs long, slow cooking but once done, freezes very well and just needs reheating
• Duchesse potatoes,  made and piped into rosettes can then be ‘open frozen’ and then packed into containers.  These were placed on baking trays and cooked from frozen on the day.
• The roulade was frozen, then taken out on the morning of our lunch.

One of my guests suffers from coeliac disease, and also has to eat very low residue, and I was able to easily adapt this menu so that it satisfied those requirements.  The person in question simply did not eat the runner beans or salad.

I knew my guests would have questions about the wedding and so printed out some maps, with the wedding location circles, photos and information to put on the walls so we could chat as we had our pre lunch drinks and nibbles.  The bride-to-be had sent some photos of the hotel so I was able to print those out as well.

 

I wanted the table to have a wedding feel about it and so decorated it accordingly…..

……and of course you have to have a photo of the dessert!

Our guests arrived, sharing with us stories of how they explained to other friends and family members that they were going to a wedding in Jamaica without leaving the UK!

There were a couple of especially happy moments when both myself and my elder son got messages from YS (my husband does not have a mobile phone) which we read out to our guests.

It was 7pm before our guests left, all of us astonished at how the time had flown.

A wonderful day.

Congratulations Mr and Mrs Finnegan!