tasty tasting

We're going for our tasting tonight at Bubby's. Here are our selections:

Appetizers
Shrimp and Pork Spring Rolls
Mini Potato Pancakes with sour cream and onions
Mini slider burgers
Mini BBQ pulled pork
Mac and Cheese bites

Salads
Arugula with roasted pears and parm
Beet and goat cheese salad

Entrees
Rosemary roasted chicken
Striped bass
Pecan crusted salmon
Brisket

Sides
Mac and cheese
Green beans almondine
Mashed Potatoes
Grilled asparagus

Desserts
Apple Pie
Carrot Cake
Peanut Butter Chocolate Pie

I expect to feel the same way I do after a visit to chipotle, like I just ate a small animal, but happier.

Bronx Beat

At some point I was going to go into detail ad nausea about all of the places we considered for the reception/party. If you grow up in the Bronx, when you get married, you used to be contractually obligated to have your wedding at one of a string of catering halls on Shore Road in New Rochelle. I won't name names, you know who you are. We went one afternoon, right after the Botanical Gardens broke my heart (damn you abigail kirsch).

I can't really summarize how each experience was more horrible and not us as the one before. I can ask you to watch this video and imagine these women planning your wedding. Or, even better, their husbands, with pinky rings, offering you "top shelf liquor, your johnny walker, your johnny walker black"



skip to 2:42 when she talks about her husband...it's funny

Budget Friendly*

Yeah...budget friendly and NYC do not go together. Don't get me wrong, they definitely go together for all the lovely couples down at city hall, on the waterfront or small intimate restaurant celebrations, (all of whom I love and bitterly want to be at various times) but for me....well, I have a 254 person guest list. Thank you over-breeding grandparents. Dad's 1 of 12, Mom's 1 of 4. And yes, there are two priests and a spinster in those numbers who didn't produce children.

We discussed cocktail receptions, I brought up a bbq truck, we thought about renting gyms. Turns out a cocktail reception costs as much as sit down because you 'have to provide continuous food for four hours' yeah, we heard that. FH didn't realize how big the list was and denied the bbq truck/surprise picnic wedding. fatal fiscal mistake. And I'd already rented a school gym for my sister's bridal shower 9 years ago, we were poor and had 100 women for a bridal shower. yup. ridiculous.

So we decided to copy a wedding we loved. My cousin and his wife had a church wedding, greeted people at the door, which I LOVE, and afterwards had a mid-day brunch at a restaurant they rented for the day.

So, budget-friendly meant keeping the cost per person at our venue to under $100 per person. How hard could it be to rent out a restaurant for under $100 a head? v. if you are doing Saturday night in or near NYC.

Then I found kvetch.indiebride.com, where there was a whole thread about Bubby's Brides. Bubby's the brunch spot? with the pies? YES. And message board brides raved. We went, met Jojo, found the price to be justunder $100 with food and drink (not including tax and gratuity) and fell in love.

The best part? We live right across the East River from Bubby's and can point out the building to ourselves.

The worst part? We're getting married in the Bronx and having the party in Brooklyn. Think everyone can handle getting a metro card and a map and figure it out? And my parents think they are getting eggs for dinner, but I can't fix that.

And yes, you have now multiplied $100 by 254 and come up with $25,400. I have too. I know. It's a lot. It's our little part to keep the economy alive.

So You Want To Get Married At...Lake Isle

Immediately after the tour of the most improbable wedding reception site ever, my sister (MOH) yelled at both me and my betrothed (just trying something other than FH) for looking at possibly the most expensive wedding reception site in all of the Bronx (we'll get to Wave Hill later). She then packed up her car, her child, my betrothed and myself into her car for a whirlwind tour of the catering halls of Westchester County. Our first stop was Lake Isle.

Sidenote: Lake Isle is more a community pool and golf course than country club, but their community happens to be Westchester, one of the wealthiest counties in NY State, if not the whole country.

I have to say, that for someone coming off the high of Abigail Kirsch and her loverly set up at the Botanical Gardens, I was pleasantly surprised by Lake Isle. The catering manager was friendly and nice. More importantly, he was willing to NEGOTIATE when he heard we didn't want everything included in their standard package. Johnny Walker Black means nothing to me, as I'm a beer and wine kind of girl...maybe a mojito, definitely a margarita, if the season/location allows.

The space was ample and recently updated and honestly, again, nice. And that is fine. But we weren't looking for nice, we were looking for a place that would be US. For a little over $100 per person, you can get the cocktail hour, full open bar, apps, salad, main and dessert. This is reasonable for New York and Lake Isle is a nice place. If you want the traditional country club like wedding, but don't have dad's membership to Winged Foot to fall back on, go for it.


Surprising also in this visit was the fact that Autumn wedding dates are the most popular in the North East. I thought it was the summer, with the June bride phenomena and all. Turns out most of my summer weddings have been of teachers who just happen to have the whole summer off after their June weddings.

Came across this nifty website for couples looking for a reception site in Westchester. Anything that strikes your fancy, be it castles, country clubs, mansions, etc.

So You Want To Get Married At…The New York Botanical Gardens

The Dream. The New York Botanical Gardens, located in the Bronx, New York. Being a Bronx native, and knowing when they changed it from Bronx Botanical to New York (around the same time that the Bronx had to give up the 212 area code for 718), I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the Gardens. Growing up, I attended their farming for youth program very very early on Saturday mornings, would come home with a Ziploc baggie that contained two radishes and 6 leaves of lettuce and wanted to make a salad right away.

Every couple wants to have a celebration that they have an emotional tie to, or in the very least, is convenient to the location of their wedding. The Gardens were both for us. So we booked an appointment, thinking that at the very least, we would know what we were up against in terms of cost and standards, as Abigail Kirsh is the gold standard in New York, if you care about those things. At this point in the engagement, two weeks in, we didn't know what we cared about just yet.

I left with jelly knees, wanting to curl myself up into the fetal position in their conifer forest.

For a Saturday wedding, as our church does not do Fridays, the cost is $250 per person, not including tax and tip, so add about 30% on top of that 250. And they only take cash or check. Now, I don’t advocate credit card usage for weddings, but sometimes you gotta go to the mattresses, the amex mattress specifically. Jelly….knees. If you can afford it, go for it. The food looked amazing, the service they provide you is not to be matched and I have it from good authority that the food tastes amazing. It is the cookie that all cutters were made to copy.

You should also know that Abigail Kirsch catering is the sole caterer of some of the most high profile locations in New York, if you can afford them. The prices vary, but not by much. Also, they restrict you to specific florists ($$$$) and require a pretty hefty location fee, that is not tax deductible.

My great MOH, my sister, quickly scolded me for even going to the Gardens and then made me go to almost all of the catering halls in Westchester County (to the north of the city) on the VERY SAME DAY. Well, let me tell you, that was the mother of all reality checks. But it did give me a sense of what was out there, and there are some affordable options to be had. I didn’t want any of them, but at least they were there. In the end, we are planning a non-cookie cutter wedding, that represents us, not the wedding industry that places like Abigail Kirsch founded and helped foster.

My advice to newly engaged couples: Do not go to your dream location without a firm sense of your budget and alternatives already in line, with appointments made, otherwise you are in for a world of inflated expectations and high levels of disappointment.