Deciding on a Gluten Free Wedding

This post is one I knew I wanted to address from the beginning of our wedding planing. Both my husband, Trenton, and I are gluten intolerant. We went gluten free around the same time 9 years ago when we didn’t know each other, funny huh? God was pretty cool with our love story 🙂

Photography by Madi Taylor

When it came to our wedding planning there was the decision if everything at our reception should be gluten free, if we would make the food ourselves or have the venue cater for us. We ended up speaking with the venue and they had many gluten free options available and were aware of cross contamination. I am very sensitive to gluten. The longer I’ve been gluten free the more sensitive I’ve become, so much so that even flour, baked goods, bread, or pizza in the air affects me. I end up with horrible brain fog and a headache- it feels like my brain can’t function. Because of this, we decided all the food should be gluten free so there would be no risk of either of us getting sick or cross contamination.

The meal consisted of two entree options: seasoned baked chicken or slow roasted beef. The sides were green beans, mashed potatoes and salad. Everything was dairy free except for the mashed potatoes and the green beans might have had a little bit of butter. I do ok with small amounts of lactose though.

Now you’re probably wondering about the cake. Ordering a gluten free wedding cake is VERY expensive and with the number of guest we had we wanted to do cupcakes as well, increasing the price even more. We knew we wanted to do a two tier cake for us and the bridal party and cupcakes for the guests.

Rewind 4 years prior to my senior year of high school. For my graduation party we made everything our self including the cake and cupcakes and my mom’s friend Lisa decorated them.  People couldn’t believe they were dairy free.

So we decided to do the same for our wedding: make it our self. Mom and I spent days before the wedding making around 360 cupcakes and our two tier wedding cake. The day before the wedding, my mom’s friend Lisa made all the icing and we all three pitched in to help decorate the cupcakes. Lisa used to work in a bakery so she knows her stuff and decorated the wedding cake for us too! She does a wonderful job at decorating and her icing is the best!

Guests couldn’t believe they were gluten free and dairy free! We had three flavors of cupcakes: vanilla, strawberry and cherry chocolate chip. Our cake was cherry chocolate chip on the bottom and strawberry on the top. They were the best cupcakes/cake we’ve ever had!

We didn’t have a homemade gluten free flour mix…we used Aldi’s Live GFree yellow cake mix! YEP, Aldi’s gluten free box mix was used to make our wedding cake and all 360 cupcakes! By using Aldi’s box mix we were able to save hundreds of dollars! Sure it was time consuming and hard work making them all our self, but it was so worth it in the end! And it was pretty neat to make our own wedding cake and cupcakes! The best part was not one cupcake was left! 🙂

-Ciara