So there's an article doing the rounds about a vegan bride who is having some issues with her guest's food preferences.
The story goes that the mother of the bride sent out wedding invitations to friends and family and for some reason included the fact that it would be catered with vegan food. The guests were not happy about this 'We have had many RSVPs basically saying they will not be coming if the food is vegan. I have to say this was unexpected, many of the family are quite traditional, meat-and-two-veg, but I did not expect this to be such a problem.' Read the article here
Vegan food means no animal products. It doesn't mean no flavour! It doesn't mean you'll be left hungry! For some reason a lot of people still hold that very out of date view of vegan food.
But, even if the food were to be rubbish, which wedding food often can be (who hasn't been to a wedding where the food is a bit poo!?) the fact is, a wedding is about the people getting married, not how much you're going to enjoy the food. I wouldn't be keen on going to a wedding where they catered raw or fruitarian food, but I'd suck it up because it's only one day! The fact some people can't last one day without animal products is shocking and slightly worrying! I've heard of people who've had a vegan wedding and their guests actually snuck out during the day to grab a hamburger! How rude is that!?
I got married last year. We both agreed that we wouldn't compromise our ethics to suit other people, so the whole wedding was going to be vegan. Everything was vegan from the food down to our shoes and my hair and makeup.
When we first started planning, we weren't too sure how difficult it would be to get good catering. That was our main worry. I already knew about non-leather shoes, make up etc. (You can find those in our wedding and toiletries albums on Facebook).
So, we decided to pick a venue we liked and then ask if they could provide what we wanted. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't an issue at all for the places we contacted. It really shouldn't be in this day and age. If a chef is half decent, they should be able to whip up vegan food just as easily as non-vegan food. We also asked for vegan wine to go along with the food, which again was no problem. All you have to do to find out about vegan alcohol is go onto barnivore.com. We also have some vegan booze in our adult album on Facebook.
Our wedding cake was made by a company called The Little Cake Parlour. They're not vegan but will cater for. When we went for our taster we were actually worried she'd forgotten to make us vegan samples because the cake tasted so creamy! (It was vegan!).
We also agreed we wouldn't put anything about the food being vegan on the actual invitation, unlike the mother of the bride from the article. We didn't feel we needed to "warn" people and we wouldn't normally refer to our food as "vegan food", we just call it "food". Things that come from animals are not food to us. This was our menu:
We were lucky not to get much grumbling from our friends or family, maybe because we didn't mention it was vegan on the invitation, but we assumed people would expect vegan food (we are very open about the fact we are vegan!). If we had received the same kind of attitude as the girl in the article we wouldn't be keen to keep in contact with those people! If you can't look past your stomach for one day and think of other people then it's probably best you don't go to that wedding.
The food went down so well! People (the non-vegans) were really surprised vegan food could taste so good. It was great to see people tucking into delicious vegan food and seeing how flavoursome and filling it can be. The venue that catered for us and the cake maker did an amazing job!
Our advice for any vegans planning a wedding is stick to your guns; it's your day and a fully vegan wedding is no different to a non-vegan wedding, the food, booze and cake will be just as good (if not better!).