The Kentish Kitchen

14 Feb 2015

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all your love birds out there!

Me and my valentine will be having a lovely Valentine's weekend with dinner out on Sunday.

And don't worry if you haven't got someone special in your life, when I was single I used to celebrate Norm Day with my wonderful friend Clara. Named after Broadway's one and only Norm Lewis!

Norm wishes you a very Happy Norm Day!

13 Feb 2015

10 Months To Go...the food & drink

Onto one of the best parts in my opinion! I know it's wedding food, and in no way as I expecting for the food or drink to be amazing, I am still super excited. And when people say 'You'll be too busy to eat anything all day and you won't want to your at the Breakfast either'...well, they clearly haven't met me and T. There is no way that we will be missing out on the food drink and cake!

Food and Drink

All included in our wonderful venue package! We got the top level one, so Champagne for all!! We have a four course breakfast with coffee and petit fours, canapes at the drinks reception and probably ore booze provided than is wise! For the drinks reception we're going to have some mulled wine and Champagne (not together obviously), then everyone gets half a bottle of wine at the Breakfast, a glass of Champagne for toasting AND the additional wine we're putting on the tables.

We've been to weddings where there were 2 bottles of wine between 8-9 people and 'sparkling wine' and we were like, what is going on here? That was one thing we knew we wanted, ample booze and for it not too be too bad quality either!

So all we really need to do is the menu tasting which isn't until a few months before the wedding, I am really looking forward to that!

Although the venue don't allow additional food and drink (except for cake!), but we managed to sway them into letting us have some extra wine on the tables. We managed to convince them on sentimental reasons - now you might think that sounds pretty stupid, but I can ensure you it's quite the opposite. We're having some wine from a region of France called Cotes de Duras, it's a place where my family have been on holiday for the past few years (we're quite a wine-y family), of course with T tagging along, he is family after all! It also happens to be the place where T proposed (good boy!) and it's also wine that my Dad loved and so I want it on the table to remember him and drink to him.

Wedding Cake

Not booked, yet. But we're all decided, of course!

Last year we went to the National Wedding Show in London, there were a few cake places there where we nabbed a few taster pieces. There was one absolute stand out place, La Papillon Patisserie, to which we kept going back to to get more cake!

When we got home I looked them up, only to find that there are in the closest town to our venue, less than a 5 minute drive away - I'm calling that one fate!

We arranged a cake tasting and chomped our way through 12 amazing flavours of delicious, moist cake!

We've picked our three falvours for our three layers and the outside decoration. Now the only thing to do is order...

The only problem is, the tasting was so long ago, I think I might need a reminder session ;)

Cheese Cake

Yes, you heard me! Now I'm not talking about a cheese cake as in the pudding, but of course a stack of cheese wheels that resembles a cake - and why not?

Both T and I love cheese, and back at the good old National Wedding Show we saw a cheese cake put together by Godminster. They let us try each of the cheeses whilst explaining what they were and I'm hooked! The cheddar they make is so yummy and the cake had a good mixture of the more 'plain' cheeses whilst having a few different once thrown in.

If it was up to me, we'd have ordered already, but T things there might be a better one out there, so we'll see.

But there will definitely be a cheese cake there!

Better than this?

[Godminster]

Still to come...

Catch up on...

11 Feb 2015

10 Months To Go...the beauty regime

Now I'm not really one for our next category. I don't fuss with my hair, I wash it and it air dries. I wear minimal make up, have never had a manicure and don't both with any sort of beauty regime (except hand cream when I remember about once and week and taking my make up off).

Hair Stylist

Lucky Duck no.2! I've had the same hair dresser (Ian) since I was about 5, so around 20 years. Obviously him and his wife are invited to the wedding, the out come of that is...free hair stylist for the day (I think!). Last time I saw him I was talking to him about it and asking prices and he got a little secret smile and wouldn't tell me the prices. So I'm not worrying about it at the moment!

Make Up

Drawing blanks. I have two options here...DIY or professional.

If I go DIY I have the potential to save some money, I got to make up counters, look online and get ideas on how to do it myself. The huge gigantic flaw in that, I'm not really a make up person. I didn't start wearing make up until I went to uni and I only wear eyeliner and mascara everyday.

If I go professional, I don't have the worry of getting it wrong, or the make up coming off in the day. I'm leaning this way, I've just got to find the right person.

I might still go for some counter sessions though!

Manicure

Lucky duck no.3 - ha, bet you didn't see this one coming. Ian's (the hairdresser) wife can do professional manicures! He was as talkative about this as he was my hair, but with a 'We'll work something out', I'm leaving it alone for now!

General Beauty Regime

I know I've got to be better at this, I want to look good on the day...glowing as it's usually referred too.

It's winter so I need to make sure that my lips aren't chapped, my face isn't dry and my hands aren't scaley, peeling or bleeding. The skin on my hands get pretty bad in winter last December (aka 1 year to go) my hands had cuts all over them from having dry skin. Not a good look.

So I really need to up my game and take better care of myself...it's not going great at the moment. But I will formulate a plan!

Still to come...

Catch up on...

9 Feb 2015

My Week #1

I'm going to start a little post series showing my week in my diary!

Enjoy :)

10 Months To Go...the outfits are coming together

Update no.3 in the series! Onto the outfits, not you've heard quite a bit about my dress shopping so far, but what about everyone else I hear you say!

Bride's Dress

Things are coming along...I've been on shopping trips one and two and had a bit of a stress, but shopping trip three is coming along nicely.

I'm not going to expand too much, because that would be releasing the secrets of my dress!

Bridesmaid's Dresses

Boom - bridesmaids done...I hope!

After finding (in my eyes) the perfect dress, on sale, in the right sizes and just over budget (we're paying some the bridesmaids make up the rest)...I got home from work one night and went to order the dresses. Typically, one of the sizes was now out of stock.

Fast forward by a few days, I'd found various other options and was still checking the original dress and emailing around various shops to find it - breakthrough! There was a store that had one size I needed and the others were still available online. After a long phone call to order the dress from the store (I had to spell out every work od the address - the woman didn't know how to spell Leicester...I also got a call back to check the spelling of Leicester again) and a quick online purchase the dresses are on the way to me, and I cannot wait to open them and check them out! I am praying they fit!

In terms of other accessories we're yet to sort those, but I'm hoping the main hurdle is done!

[my pinterest]

Groom's Outfit

Another things that is near enough ticked off. The suit is done, a rather expensive tweed jacket, waistcoat and made to measure matching trousers! I'm not letting more info than that slip, T wants his to be a surprise too!

Groomsmen's Outfits

Not done yet - I am totally slacking! Joke, obviously.

Because of the nature of the groom's suit, there was no way we could get them to match. At the moment the thoughts are that they're going to hire something nice and elegant from Moss Bros, probably a navy 3 piece suit. Nothing really set in stone yet though!

Still to come...

Catch up on...

7 Feb 2015

10 Months To Go...the Vendors are lining up

Here's the continuing ramble about the wedding count down and where we're up to.

No doubt you'll find it thrilling ;)

Photographer

The lucky ducks that we are, we managed to bag £1,600 worth of wedding photographer for free!

One of my parents oldest friends, Trevor Godfree, is a wedding photographer. And in his words, 'I tell this to all the people I like, if I'm going to do you wedding photos for you, I'm going to do them for free'.

Bob's your Uncle!

Florist

I spent ages trawling the internet, unable to find a florist that didn't have photos of their wedding flowers that included calla lilies, palm leaves, plain roses and sparkly bits...gross.

Not matter how much promise they showed, they always had one of those photos, which was a total put off for me.

I turned to Pinterest and started searching for florists in Surrey, of course nothing much came up. But a few things cropped up that looking very promising. I followed through to a website...Blush Floral Design.

One look through, my eyes turned to the shape of hearts and I knew this was the florist for me. No tacky, boring or plain floral displays, everything was gorgeous, textured and rustic.

After a fair few emails with the wonderfully helpful and friendly Bex, I took the plunge, and we're all booked in!

Just got to work out what flowers we want now!

[Blush Floral Design]

Entertainment

We've hit our first stumbling block! After not much research at all we ruled out the possibility of live music, I know it's a wedding and everything is overpriced, but live music = overpriced!!

We're stuck between hiring a DJ and putting together our own music playlist.

Both have pros and cons.

If we hire a DJ we just give him a list of songs and let him do his thang (so to speak), but we have to shell out some cash.
If we put together our own list, we know we can get exactly what we want, and with a Spotify premium membership, that is basically sorted (except Tay Swizzle - damn you for removing yourself from Spotify!). The cost is minimal. However, do we then need to get someone at the wedding to overlook this and take charge. Does that mean they have to sit in the corner on their own all night?

Still to come...

Catch up on...