Food Tasting, etc.

Our tasting on Friday evening with Ryan went very well! We tried one appetizer item, two chicken entrees, and two beef entrees. The appetizer was a shrimp wrapped in bacon, with a chipotle BBQ sauce. It was sooo good, so we'll certainly be having those. The two chicken entrees were a lemon dill chicken and a chicken scallopini. Ryan was a little worried about mass producing the chicken scallopini, and after trying both we decided we liked the lemon dill chicken better anyway. For the beef entrees, we tried his german pot roast and a bourbon beef tenderloin. And the bourbon tenderloin was by far the best item of all. It was absolutely fabulous! The one negative about the tenderloin is it's going to be slightly more expensive. We're not sure how much yet, Ryan was hoping to get a good deal with his butcher. He is coming up with a quote for us on a per person basis, including appetizers and the tenderloin, so after we receive that we'll see if the total price is still within our budget.

After our tasting that evening, we drove to Jefferson City to have "real" dinner at Madison's Cafe. It was one of the restaurants we were considering for the rehearsal dinner, so we thought it was a good opportunity to try the food and see what we thought. Madison's serves Italian fare and is within blocks of the hotels where the guests will be staying (http://www.madisonscafe.com/). And, funny enough, they have a location right here by us in O'Fallon. After our dinner, we decided the food was decent and the location couldn't be beat. We spoke with our waitress about rehearsal dinners, and we ended up booking it! The room we have holds up to 75 people, and Nate and I were estimating at least 50 off the top of our heads. As far as decisions remaining on the rehearsal, all we really have to do is pick 3 to 4 entrees off of a set menu they gave us, and then figure out how we want to handle drinks. They didn't even need a deposit!

Our final accomplishment of the weekend was determining a cool layout for the reception hall. We wanted to do something different, and Nate came up with a way to utilize a different entrance to the building...and hide the buffet line! So, I hope it works out. Luckily, my dad had drew up the plans when the building was being built, so we were able to use the plans for the building and some quarters to represent tables to kind of play with the layout. Our favorite layout is displayed below. We are using the side entrance to the building. The tables will be lining the left and right sides, with an open aisle down the middle that leads to the head table. The cake table will be in the middle of the aisle, and the buffet tables will be behind the backdrops of the head table. We "think" this will work, so it's all just speculation now, but it's still a lot of progress and exciting to think about. I hope our decorator lady agrees that this layout is feasible.