vegan columbus: vegan living in central ohio

I'm a little late to the game with this, but maybe someone will still find it useful. If you're planning a veg*an wedding, you might want to pick up June's issue of VegNews. It's got a 10-page feature on various couples' vegan weddings, including details of their reception menus, photos, and relevant highlights of their wedding experiences. These menus sound amazing, and there's tons of variety. (They do this feature every year, so you might also check out their back issues.)

(Also I personally was happy to read them because for some reason I'd been feeling like I need to keep everything somehow in a theme or matching. So I was pointlessly distressed about wanting pan-Asian finger food AND brunch-type food at my late morning wedding. Reading Marisa and David's (pp. 42) Asian-Mediterranean menu liberated me from the fear of culinary eclecticism!)

You might already know how much I love Pattycake Vegan Bakery. Well now I love Jenn (owner/bakery goddess) even more! I talked to her a bit about having her do my wedding cake, and here are the following relevant infos:

I've been slacking on updating about my wedding planning! Sorry!

This post is just a quick note saying that we've decided to say bollocks to the statehouse and their $8,000 fee and whatnot, and we're homing in on North Bank Park, near the Arena District. It's going to be much cheaper, and it's more 'us' --- I think it was once a small train station or something. And more relevant to this site, it doesn't have any specific requirements about who does the catering, so you can cook your own food or find the most vegan-friendly caterer out there. But here's what you, dear vegan bride/groom/MOH/FMIL/LGTBQIA want to know about it:

So everyone knows eBay is amazing. I just bought a wedding dress for $20 including shipping from eBay. But when I did a search for "vegan wedding shoe", it did that thing where it crossed out each word and said maybe if I tried without "vegan" or without "wedding" or without "shoe" in the search. Lame! Granted, you can always go to "normal" shoe stores and try to find labels and stuff. Which is fine for finding sneakers at Goodwill, but we're talking about flippin' weddings here! How hard can it be to find fancy-pants white shoes that necessitate no animal deaths?

Not that hard! Here are links to a few of the white/silver/otherwise vaguely wedding-ish in some way, vegan shoes I came across on the glorious Interwebz (click the image to go to each shoe's respective site):

Since the actual logistical planning of the Great Vegan Nerd-Punk Wedding of 2009 is proceeding at a somewhat lackidasical pace, I thought I'd post a little rant to keep the wedding blog fresh.

In searching Google for terms like "vegan bride" and "vegan wedding" and such nonsense, I've come across the title question several different times in surprisingly uniform wording, being asked mostly by critical mothers/~-in-law, but also often by the dreaded Vegan Brides themselves. And when they do ask, they get some ridonkulous answers from all kinds of people who seem to think serving guests a vegan meal = requiring them to join the Hare Krishna for a day. In a society where brides are allowed - nay, expected! - to tell people in minute detail what to wear, what to say, which tattoos to cover up, and basically who to be on the SPECIAL DAAAAAAAAY, it's still considered rude and bossy of a bride (and it's always the bride who gets the '-zilla', the groom is just a prop, right?) to only serve the guests foods that she would be willing to serve in her own home.

If there is only one thing at my wedding (Yes. One thing. As in, everyone is naked and there is no food or tables, or even the ground, and we are floating in the vacuum of space as we say our vows...) it must be champagne (or more likely "champagne"). And being the sissy little girl that I am, I have always loved Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante "champagne", sparkly sugar-water that it is. But then I woke up in a cold sweat when it hit me --- I don't know if it's vegan! My stomach sank, anticipating disappointment when I discovered that it secretly contains jellied dolphin brains or something horrific like that.

So, the Mr. and I are thinking of having the wedding ceremony and reception at the Ohio Statehouse. This is cool and exciting because there are lots of really neat event spaces, and not much decoration is needed to make it all look pretty because it's already pretty majestic, and you get parking and security and the rehearsal and table/chair setup and security all included. However, they require that your catering come from their list of approved caterers.

Yes, it's true. the VeganColumbus site admin, bbinkovitz, is getting married next year. I'm starting this blog partly to keep track of all the vendors I talk to, partly so I can review all the vendors I talk to, and partly because it really pisses me off that some piece of crap chick-lit book called 'Toss the Bride' is so high on the Google rankings for search terms 'vegan bride' because it has chapter titles such as 'The Greedy Bride', 'The Evil Bride' and, you guessed it, 'The Vegan Bride'. And then there's all this stuff about hemp/silk blend gowns that for some reason come up as well. Like, if it's got hemp in it, it's vegan, even if it's 80% dead animal secretions. Not so much.