Recognition for the Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2011 is determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 750,000 WeddingWire newlyweds. Our past clients are among those that shared their experiences on WeddingWire, the largest wedding review site in the nation.

The Casual Gourmet stands among the top five percent of wedding professionals in the WeddingWire community, representing quality and service excellence within the wedding industry. Awards were given to the top wedding professionals across 20 service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers, and were based on the overall professional achievements throughout the past year.

“WeddingWire is honored to celebrate the success of the top-rated wedding professionals within the WeddingWire community,” said Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. “With the annual Bride’s Choice Awards™ program, WeddingWire has the unique opportunity to recognize the best wedding professionals across the US and Canada. We applaud The Casual Gourmet for their professionalism and dedication to enhancing the wedding planning experience last year.”

We are happy to announce that The Casual Gourmet is among the very best in Catering within the WeddingWire Network, which includes leading wedding planning sites WeddingWire, Martha Stewart Weddings, Project Wedding and Weddingbee. We would like to thank our past clients for nominating us to receive the Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2011.

For more information, please visit our WeddingWire Storefront today at The Casual Gourmet WeddingWire Storefront 

For more information on the Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2011, please visit weddingwire.com.

Real Wedding: Doug + Paige’s Fun Carnival Wedding

This one is from Jen over at Green Wedding Shoes who focuses on unique weddings in Southern California and we absolutely love it! A carnival themed wedding, complete with games, cotton candy and… wait for it… a Ferris Wheel! Looking for inspiration for you wedding, definitely check this one out.

Bucking Traditions… or Rather, Making New Ones

Here is a great article by Sarah Toulouse (a Chicago photographer) on wedplan.net about wedding traditions. It actually fits in well with my post from last week.

The First Weightless Wedding

This articles is not so much a blog post, or even wedding tips, it’s just a really cool wedding! The ceremony took place in one of the planes that they train astronauts in.

5 Questions To Ask Your Wedding Photographer

Picking a photographer is hard. This post comes from an event planning company down in the Washington DC area and we this they are exactly the question to ask. It’s the most important day of your life, of course you want great photos of it!

Green Wedding Tips

The last link we have for you isn’t a specifc blog post about green weddings but an entire website dedicated to helping couples make their wedding a little more green. Enjoy!

Check back an the end of July for another blog round up!

PS. We just started up a Facebook and Twitter page, so please fan and follow us!

I don’t mean over planning every single detail of the event. It is all about finding a way to express authentically who they are as a couple and allowing their guests to see and feel and share in the joy of the day. We specialize in non traditional weddings and Cape Cod is a destination wedding location, so perhaps here at the Casual Gourmet we have the opportunity to see more than our share of personal and unique touches.

Let me share with you a few stories of how couples I have worked with have spiced up their weddings with games, with gifts and by adding to (or even throwing out) tradition.

The Ceremony at Heritage where the bride and groom played Rock, Paper, Scissors. Click to enlarge.

Earlier this summer, I had a lovely couple who had a simple, but beautiful, wedding at Heritage Museums and Gardens in Sandwich. They were sweet and very in love and planned every detail of the wedding together. Having each written beautiful and meaningful vows they could not decide who should speak first, so right in front of all their friends and family, they played a little game of Rock, Paper and Scissors!

This is a perfect example of the couple taking ownership of their wedding. It was unique, fun and only worked because their family and friends instantly recognized how it fit the couple’s style of communication.

The next story took place back in 2003 with both the ceremony and reception at the groom’s family’s home on Pleasant Bay in Orleans. Everything about this wedding, from the ceremony under a driftwood arch, to the bouquet of wild flowers gathered by family members, to the dancing, the bride and groom made it their own very personal celebration!

To begin the festivities at the reception, guests were told to flip over their seating card where they found a picture of another guest. They then had to go find the person and introduce themselves, as this person would become important to them later in the evening. Pleasant chaos ensued as the guests laughingly found the person in their picture

Then reception started with the bride and groom toasting all their friends instead of vice versa.

After the buffet dinner was served, it was time for the first dance. The bride, having been a dance teacher, had made up a dance for her guests. The bride and groom gave a quick lesson, then told the guests that their partner would be the person they met earlier in the evening. Everyone of the 175 guests found their partner and danced the bride’s special dance in unison with the bride and groom leading the way.

The last story I have for you took place two years ago at the bride’s family’s home in Osterville. The bride and groom were some of the sweetest people I have ever met and they did not just want to thank their guests for coming but they also wanted to wish them good luck.

Could a line on the invitation or ceremony program could have taken care of this? Sure. But that would not have been very memorable.

The card with a lottery ticket and quote that we put under each salad plate. Click to Enlarge. (Photo by Bello Photography)

Instead, the couple had us put lottery scratch tickets under each salad plate with a great quote that said:

Where there is great love there are always miracles. -Will Cather

When we cleared the salad plates, you could hear the oooh and ahhs from the guests as they got a pleasant little surprise that said thank you and good luck!

These stories are just a few examples of the many couples who have taken the step from a great wedding to their perfect wedding. Make sure as you plan your wedding you make find a way to add your own personal touch to it — it’s that little extra that makes your day perfect!