InTouch with Southern Kentucky February 2020 | Page 14

H ome
IN TOUCH
From
Colors to Cakes
What to keep in mind when planning a wedding
BY CARLA SLAVEY
COMMONWEALTH JOURNAL
On the surface, February may
seem like too much of a cold, win-
tery month to think about planing
a wedding. Most people, when
they think of weddings, think of
more popular months like June or
October – warm spring or autumn
months with flowers and color.
But February is a month of ro-
mance – Valentine’s Day exists, of
course – and it is also National Wed-
ding Month, which is punctuated at
the end with March 1st – National
Wedding Planning Day.
So why worry about the details
in the dead of winter? According to
many of the people who help put
weddings together, early prepara-
tion is an absolute necessity.
Bill Patterson, one of the owners
of Cave Hill Vineyard and Winery,
said that families should start look-
ing for a venue like his “at a very
minimum of 6 months” ahead of the
wedding, and more would be better.
14 • I n T ouch with S outhern K entucky 
Caterer Jami Dobbs of Main Street
Deli suggested starting even earlier.
“At least a year. Actually, if you
want a wedding in June, you better
go a year and a half,” she said.
If needing a specific venue along
with any specific photographer,
caterer or the perfect live-flower ar-
rangement, coordinating that could
take time just to find a single date
that accommodate everyone.
Dobbs herself said that she only
does two weddings each month,
and that many of her 2020 months
are already booked up.
She has taken bookings “at short
notice,” she said, but to her, that
“short notice” is still around six
months. Plus, it depends on her
availability.
“If they can get the place, I usually
can work it out,” she said.
Not to say every aspect of the
wedding has to be planned out to
be traditional. Dobbs said that, as a
caterer, she enjoys seeing how the
meal is planned around the person-
alities of those getting married.
She has done wedding receptions
where she has cooked steak and
chicken meals. She has done some
that had hamburgers and hot dogs
with a condiment bar. She remem-
bers doing one that was a soup and
salad bar.
“This probably was my favorite,”
she said. “It was at Christmas time,
and we did a hot chocolate and
coffee bar. And then we did the
soup and the salad.” She made three
kinds of soups, based on recipes
that were traditional to the bride’s
family.
She then pointed out that one she
will be catering in June requires sev-
eral different “fun food” bars that
will represent the different stages of
the couple’s relationship. There will
be a taco bar, and an area that will
require her to bring in food from
Raising Cane’s out of Nicholasville.
As far as desserts, she and Main
Street Deli’s cake decorator Jennifer
Salmons have done everything from
a traditional multi-tiered wedding
cake, to cupcake cakes, to no cake
at all – just a selection of pies, bars
and cookies.
F ebruary 2020