The Definitive Guide to Planning a Foodie Wedding on a Budget

If 2013 was the year of world-wide travel for us, 2014 has been the year of weddings. Starting with ours. We got married in May. And in June. We got married twice so we could share and celebrate with families both in North and South America. For us, the timing was just perfect: we had been engaged for a few years already and our original intent was to honeymoon it in Brazil for the World Cup. However, the timing was not ideal for our wallets since we had just returned from our nine months of travel and had just started to replenish our piggy banks.

Instead of stressing out about it, we knew from the beginning we were going to have a very casual, budget-friendly wedding in California. I also knew from the beginning that as far as logistics went, food was my priority and I would not budge on in terms of quality and deliciousness. During our multi-day treks in Ethiopia and long bus rides in Sri Lanka, we would mentally plan our wedding and throw numbers together in our heads to see how we could work with a tiny budget.

Our challenge was to do a great wedding with a hundred and forty guests for five thousand dollars. Insane. I know. But it didn't seem too impossible and I love getting creative with money and food. In the end, we got our dream wedding for $6k and I loved every blissful second of it. I never turned into a bridezilla (so I'm told) and the whole thing was a ton of fun and not all that stressful.

If you are tight on money and want to have a foodie wedding, this is the definitive how-to guide. Or at least it's my how-to. But first, three words of advice on general wedding planning:

First
Set your priorities. For us it was food as #1 and then a casual vibe as #2. Your priorities will drive your budget. If you want a foodie wedding, then make sure that food makes your top two.

Second
Congrats! You're engaged so make sure to give yourself the gift of time if you can. Try not to rush into the wedding. If you can give yourself a year or at least nine months to plan, you will increase your chances of not turning into a nut-case and having an enjoyable wedding planning experience.

Third
DIY. When it comes to budget, planning and doing a wedding yourself is key. Ask family and friends to help. From the point of view of saving money, I would advise against a wedding planner (make friends and family your planners), a DJ (iPod or iPhone plus portable speakers are great DJs), table staff (we hired college kids) and bar tenders (tap a keg and give people wine bottle openers for self-service). The only exception is a photographer so go ahead and spend money on that. Buy all of your decorations piece by piece over time and store them at home. On wedding day, recruit your planners to help you decorate. Oh and by the way, a day wedding is more economical than a night one.

Recycled wood and white paint: voila!

Now, the FOOD.

Venue
Definitely go for a venue that gives you 100% freedom to figure out your own food. For a naturally beautiful setting, I'd highly recommend you consider renting out a space at your local county or state park. It's cheaper than almost any venue and they allow you to do almost whatever you want. Plus, if there are tables there already then you don't have to spend money renting them. We reserved two picnic areas in a park and the whole thing cost us $600. Tables and chairs included.

Redwood park venue

Choosing a restaurant/caterer 
Since we have agreed that food is a priority, the first thing to do is to not go with a traditional wedding caterer. They're expensive and the trick to their business is not delicious food but the sweet margins they'll make from you. A strategy that worked really well for us was to think outside the box and to ask the most unusual suspects if they catered. Our first choice was an amazing seafood Sinaloa taco truck in a less than ideal part of East Oakland. Unfortunately, food trucks couldn't drive into the forest so that didn't work out. Too bad because they would've done the whole thing for $900. Instead, we found a great tiny hole in the wall Mexican joint further down the street from the Sinaloan spot that had delicious home-made cooking and even used Niman Ranch beef! Although it was only $300 more dollars than the food truck, it was still a great deal. Plus, Taco Grill is the best Mexican food we have found in the Bay Area so far and the owner was a pleasure to work with. So what I suggest is to go "hole in the wall hopping" and sample a wide variety of food from these small restaurants. Once you have found a few that you love, ask them if they cater. If they do, you're probably in business.

Taco Grill Goodness

Ordering
Try not to mention the "w" word from the beginning just because it tends to hike up prices by at least 20%. Say you're curious about their catering options for your party size—ours was 140—and you're wondering what kind of service they offer. We opted to not get any appetizers or drinks (seemed like it just added to the bill because people would be guzzling beer and wine) and just focused on the food. We wanted to make sure every guest could stuff themselves (God forbid you run out of food!) but we estimated about two tacos and a tamale for each person, which is already too much, plus side dishes like veggies and salad. We ordered food we actually liked instead of trying to cater to our vegan, gluten-free, dairy intolerant, raw food, whatever-else-is-out-there friends. We only got pork, beef and veggies.... because that's what we wanted. As far as finances, the total came out to under $9 per person for a very filling lunch. Not bad. Plus, set up and two servers were included in our order.

Appetizers
We didn't get appetizers from Taco Grill because we figured we could do it ourselves. The only exception was the 380 oz (almost 3 gallons) of their home-made guac—it's to die for, we didn't want it running out and was worth the investment! This is when Costco really came through. We kind of have a thing for cheese so we bought 13 pounds of all kinds of gourmet cheese for a massive cheese platter. We finished up the appetizer tables with strawberries, blueberries and grapes, all kinds of fun crackers (we didn't opt for bread or other types of fruit because it would've been a pain to slice/cut), chips and guac. I think we spent around $300 total on appetizers.

Keeping it simple: berries, cheese, crackers /chips and guac

Drinks
Our venue did not allow hard liquor so it made our choice nice and easy: wine and beer. We got a 15 gallon keg of golden ale, a 15 gallon keg of black lager, and a five gallon keg of IPA from one of our favorite local breweries, Linden Street, for about $150 total. We could've easily gotten away with one 15 gallon keg plus a five gallon keg and spent even less. Wine was a big challenge initially. Our goal was to spend $5 per bottle for GOOD wine, which involved a lot of sampling but gave us a great excuse to have a lot of wine dinner parties! Living in the Bay Area, we decided we would be able to score at some of the Sonoma wineries so we did some tasting weekends up in wine country. There were no deals to be had! We then tried the 0.5 cent sale at BevMo! but those wines were actually too expensive and just not very good. Maybe $5/bottle was too ambitious... until we wine sampled at Trader Joe's. We were shocked at how good their less expensive wine tasted. We ended up settling for about six cases of mostly red and some whites. There were definitely $3.99 bottles in there that tasted quite good! We also got lucky and one of our friends who works at a winery in Napa hooked us up with three cases of very good wine and charged us at cost so we were able to offer our guests a very nice bottle for their first few glasses. So my advice is to go on some wine tastings just for the fun of it if you're going to have wine at your wedding but if you're pressed for time just skip it all and give Trader Joe's a try. We ended up spending around $500 on wine and stayed on budget. To be honest, no one drinks that much wine at a day wedding so we could've spent $350 total and still be fine. The risk of running out while we were planning the wedding kept us on the more conservative end of things but, oh well, now we have wine for the remainder of the year!

Don't forget the non-booze drinks! 

Cake
I don't have a sweet tooth and I don't really like cake or anything sugary for that matter. Neither of us wanted a wedding cake so we were looking for alternatives like huge bowls of sliced fruit or dark chocolate truffles. But there was no time to buy a lot of fruit and cut it up and a minimum of 300 chocolate truffles would ruin the wallet. A month or so before the wedding we still had no f***ing clue about the whole dessert thing and it was starting to get a little stressful. Thankfully, our dear friend and neighbor invited us over for a charcuterie and sangria party and they randomly got a red velvet bundt cake for dessert. I focused 99.99% of my attention on the beautiful salame, smoked turkey, fig, goat cheese, green apple, honey and brie display he had made and I wouldn't have even tried a pinch of that cake if it wasn't for his urging. I gave in and had a tiny taste of the cake and I was sold. It was a delicious, chocolatey, velvety, moist, ridiculous cake! We ordered eight for our wedding from Nothing Bundt Cakes and were finally able to solve our dessert conundrum. For your wallet's sake, my advice is to avoid the whole traditional wedding cake route and get something you actually like to eat. If it does not come in an extra large size, just order 3 or 4x the amount and you'll be all set. I think we spent about $240 on all eight cakes and it was such a hit I know I went for seconds and almost everyone else I talked to at the wedding did too!

One of the few cakes I'll ever eat

So, let's run the food tab:
Booze: .......... $650
Appetizers: ... $300
Lunch: .......... $1,250
Cake: ............ $240

Let's round that total up to $2,500.

The rest looked more or less like this:
Photographer: .... $1,300
Decorations: ...... $500
Wedding dress: .. $40
Venue+Uhaul: ... $800
Miscellaneous: ... $400

For a $6,000 wedding, that's not bad at all. And to be honest, we really did get a lot of food and booze. Although we had a small budget, we never compromised on taste or quality and focused on getting truly delicious food for our guests and us. We had a keg and a half of great local beer left over, about three or four glorious cakes that we ate for the rest of the weekend and froze, BOMB Mexican leftovers even after people went up for triples (!!), about two blocks of awesome cheese we stashed in our fridge and approximately four cases of really good wine.  I'm not saying that I wanted to—a foodie's worst nightmare, running out of food, kept me in check—but less food could have been purchased, allowing even more breathing room for all the rest of the wedding stuff. But regardless we were thrilled to accomplish our goal of having a fun, relaxed and casual wedding with the best food ever.

If you're a foodie, don't let a small budget scare you into compromising on your passion. Have fun with it and get creative, you'll be amazed at how exciting the process can be and how budget-friendly wedding food can be. Remember to relax and to enjoy sharing the best day of your life with your closest friends and family. Most important, eat, drink and be merry.

**This post is dedicated to our friends who came from far and near, our amazing and supportive families who put up with us and dedicated countless hours to help us plan and set up our wedding, our amazing wedding officiant and his wife, our musicians and all of you we know wish could have been there but could not make it. Above all, I dedicate this to my brilliant, loving and talented husband Eliot: I'm excited about the adventurous and food-filled times we'll get to share for the rest of our lives.**

Mr. and Mrs. Peper

PS: feel free to reach out to me with any questions. I left out a LOT of wedding planning stuff because there is just so much that goes into a wedding but I'd be happy to try to help if I can!

All of the photos on this post were taken by our great photographer, Praise. Check her out if you want a good, affordable photographer: www.comeplum.com

Less and longer: a few words of wisdom on traveling right

So you’ve saved and budgeted for your trip and now it’s finally time to plan your itinerary. Six months of travel time stretches out before you like a magic carpet. So many opportunities to explore exotic locales! So much time to explore all those places on your bucket list!

Ahh, your bucket list… How many boxes will you be able to check? You have six months. Why not do the Inca Trail, explore Patagonia, go shark diving in South Africa, eat dumplings in China, climb Mount Kilimanjaro, go to a full moon party in Thailand and find yourself at an Indian ashram? Hell, you should probably throw in an Italian cooking class and a camel riding in Morocco for good measure. It all sounds great. Until, of course, you hit the brick wall of reality.

Inside a hellish bus for a heinous ride through Nepal

Travel can be hard, frustrating and draining. You start to think about that into your second day into a thirty-hour bus ride in Nepal where the space between the seats was apparently designed to be perfect for two-year-olds and there’s a box of meat rotting in the back. Or when you arrive in your fourth Tanzanian town and every single local is trying to cheat you for forty times the proper cost of accommodation. Or maybe when you get violently sick in the middle of the wilderness with no hospital (or road) for days. These are the times when you start to appreciate two magic words: less and longer.

Less really is more. Don’t stack your itinerary. It’s far better to spend two months than two weeks in any given country on your list. And in that country it’s far better to spend two weeks rather than two days in any given city or destination.

By doubling down on particular places you kill two birds with one stone. First, because you’re in one place for a long time you’ll find that perfect beach bungalow owned by the local mayor’s family and get invited to a massive wedding party where you make friends for life. If you were only there for two days you’d probably be at that guesthouse with decent but outdated reviews from Lonely Planet that now has a cockroach infestation.

Second, you minimize your exposure to the bane of all travelers: logistics. You don’t spend half of your time in country on a local bus. You don’t discover that your fourteenth taxi driver rifled through your bags. You don’t loose you luggage on an avoidable regional airline flight. You've taken six months off, use that time wisely: with less and longer you'll interact more with locals, enhance the quality of your experience and maintain very healthy levels of personal relaxation.

Basically, you’ve taken the work out of the travel. By staying longer in each place you actually get a feel for the local life there instead of blazing through in a series of photoflashes. As you get ready to plan your trip, doing a country a month would be a good rule of thumb. You may not check as many boxes but you’ll learn a lot more about yourself, a lot more about the country you’re visiting and a lot more about the true meaning of fun!


Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

Words of wisdom from grill master Mr. Castle

Grilling is a very fun and tasty way to prepare food. Throughout our travels we found plenty of coal BBQs and outdoor cooking with wood. In the United States, gas grilling is much more popular and we've been enjoying very flavorful and juicy meals, straight off the grill. But not all food from a grill is, juicy, tender or delicious. So what's the secret?

First things first, buy the right equipment. Look for a gas grill with a high BTU output. Look for about 10,000 BTUs per burner anything lower could jeopardize your grilling experience. Look for a grill with stainless steel components (burners, flavoring bars and grates). This will cost you more initially but will last for ever.

Grilling in Indonesia - coals and low BTUs

Taking care of your grill. 
The best way to clean the grill is with a steel wire brush immediately after you're done grilling your food. Dip the brush in water and brush the grill racks while they're hot. This is very similar to giving your gas grill a steam bath. It gets hot so it is best to wear heat resistant gloves if you want to keep your arm hairs on you. You'll probably keep the grill outside so make sure to get a snug cover for it, it will reduce rust and wear and tear.

For grilling meats, novices will do best by using a meat thermometer. So, here's a quick guide to grilling like a pro -- no more dry, rubbery, un-chewable meats!

Part I.
Chicken

Turn on your grill and turn on your burners on high -- as high as they go (for larger grills you only need to turn on one side). If your grill has a built-in thermometer, check it and you know it is done once it's reached the highest temperature (between 400 and 500 degrees F depending on the grill). Grab your marinated chicken and put it directly on top of the flame. For chicken breasts with bone and skin, put the bone side down first about 3 minutes. Then repeat on the other side. For skinless, boneless breasts, put the convex side down first (this part of the breast has a thin film on it). For non-breast chicken pieces, put them on the grill any way, cooking on high for about 3 minutes on each side.

After cooking on high heat - you can either move the chicken away from the flame or you can leave it in the middle, turning off the middle burners and turning on the laterals. The point is you want the chicken off the direct flame and you want it cooking with an indirect flame.

When is it done? For smaller pieces like drumsticks and thighs, it should take about 15 minutes. It will be done once the meat is tender and coming off the bone (if there are bones). You can open it up a little bit with a knife and make sure there is no pink, the meat should be completely white. For the chicken breast, a grilling thermometer will be your best aide. Once you reach the poultry temperature, you're all set. Once you've grilled enough, you won't even need a thermometer and you can "just tell".

Important tip: once you turn down the flame, close the lid and keep it closed until it's done.

Part II.
Salmon

Perfectly cooked salmon

Heat up grill on the highest setting. Use heavy duty foil and put a little bit of oil on it, placing the foil directly on the rack as the grill heats up so the foil is hot.

Place the salmon on the foil skin side down. If you don't want to use foil, that's fine but the skin might stick to the rack, giving you extra homework during clean-up time. Turn down the heat without moving/relocating the fish and close the cover. Keep an eye on it and when you see white juice oozing to the top of the fish, that means it's done.

Remember: don't flip the salmon, just cook it skin side down with the lid closed!

Part III.
Meat (medium done)

Heat up grill to the maximum temperature. Place steak on the grill, cook one side for about 3 minutes on high heat. After, turn down the temperature to medium high and flip the steak. Leave the steak on top of the flame and do not close the lid for cooking your steak. For medium done steaks, it will be done once juices (blood) start flowing to the top (a meat thermometer can also help you out here).

It's gotta be hot for steaks!

Tip: A very tasty and simple steak marinade is simply adding salt, pepper and a little bit of oil to the steaks just before grilling them. No more, no less.

Part IV.
White fish

Slow and low temp "grilling", Iraqi style

The best way for white fish is to use the French method for steaming. If you place the fish directly on the grill rack, it will probably get stuck and create a mess. Grab yourself two pieces of foil. Place a nice bed of vegetables on the foil so they go underneath the fish. Place the fish on top and then add another layer of vegetables. Use the other piece of foil to put it on top of your fish and veggies. Seal the foil well so that no air escapes and place your foil pouch on the grill.

This whole process should take about 10 minutes and should be cooked on medium high.

Part V.
Pork loin

You'll need an extra tool for this: a meat injector. Also, give yourself a whole day to prep this. Marinade the pork loin by injecting it with your favorite marinade, leave in the fridge over night. Heat up your grill to the ultimate maximum (just like for chicken and meat). Put the loin on the rack once your grill is hot and cook each side for no more than 3 minutes. Once the entire outside is cooked, turned the heat to the lowest setting possible, close the lid and cook for at least 4 or 5 hours (ideal cooking temperature is about 300 degrees F so that it's slightly pink and delicious juicy inside).

I have been very lucky to enjoy wonderfully grilled meals by Mr. Castle for decades now. Thank you dad for these wonderful grilling tips!

Can smartphones lessen the impact of reverse culture shock?

My 2008 relic versus my new MacBook Air

We borrowed an iPhone 4 for our trip. It has a SIM card slot and it came in very handy for the duration of our trip. One of the unfortunate parts of returning to the US was giving up the phone -- we have Verizon and they don't "do" SIM cards -- and it made me think about the possibility of finally replacing my six year old Samsung flip phone from forever ago (I hate to admit it, but, at this point my rebellion against smart phones might be coming to an end). Part of life back in the USA means more e-mail and flip phones just can't handle it. I e-mailed a great friend of mine who is not a techie, but gave me better advice than any other tech website or blog out there. Here is what she had to say about the iPhone vs. everything else debate:

I think that unless you want the fingerprint security (so you can be a show-off), you may as well stick with the 5. I have the 5. It holds a little more thrill than my 4 (extra row of apps on your screen) but for my small hand, it is not as comfortable as the 4. Plus, my one-handed texting speed is diminished because there is an extra stretch involved from the added height.

If you are looking at the 5c (5cheap), they will probably work fine. It's an apple product, so you can't go wrong. But the colors are a bit day-glo and probably meant to attract non-professionals and kids. I see the Wendy's drive-through workers or Jersey Shore thousandaires sporting them (similar to the BMW 1 series or mercedes hatch-back from 15 years ago, these will be entry-level products). If you're going with the 5c, keep your dignity and choose either white or black. You can always buy a festive case later and you won't be married to a bad mistake that clashes with your wardrobe.

HOWEVER, in my attempt to find something good about the 5c, it would be a good "trial" iPhone. If you like it, you can upgrade to the macdaddy version without hesitation or regret.

So. Bottom line. The plain old 5 is prettier than the 4, but not as comfortable to use (for female hands).

The 5c is fine for a 1-year test drive, but watch your color choice or people will think you're credit score sucks.

The 4S will probably cost the same as the 5c, and may be more comfortable. Plus the casing is glass and metal, not plastic.

The 5S is for show-offs and people with money to burn (think Shahs of Sunset). My husband wants one, but that's because of the fingerprint security. I give him a pass only because he's military and into that stuff. I may get the 5s, but you know me. I'm an impractical show off, and I own that quality.

And what about non-iPhones??

I pay no attention to non-iPhones. They are meaningless on the world stage and are kidding themselves by calling themselves competitors. It's like Nadya Suleman (octomom) comparing herself to Angelina Jolie.  The only one making that comparison is Nadya.

Our friends in Samar, Nepal (accessible only by foot/horse) have brand new iPads. I'm getting the message...

Conclusion: I bought the iPhone 5c and it works very well. I was used to the 4 so the transition made sense. The best thing to do is protect the investment so I got it a protective case and now I have the phone on the Prey app. If you're ever a victim of theft, having the tracking app and reasonable insurance (check the deductible!) could save bad headaches from happening. This recently happened to a very close friend of mine (at gunpoint nonetheless!) and it wasn't insured or with a GPS tracker on. Cost of a new smartphone can be well over $500.