Our 11th Annual Wedding Anniversary BBQ

Every year we have big BBQ to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Even though our real anniversary was on June 17th, we delayed our BBQ until September this year. In June we celebrated Katelyn’s birthday, we didn’t want to make it too big, we wanted it to be about Katelyn and I think we accomplished that!

Here we are in September, first time ever having a BBQ. And I think we kind of liked it! Saturday was a very mild day, it was about 68F and partly sunny. I took Thursday and Friday off from work to prepare, the list of things to get done before hand was enormous - we power-washed, weeded, planted trees, mulched, painted, and decorated the back with Christmas lights! With a lot of help from some awesome people we did it! And everything looked great!

This year we had the largest turn out of all, 110 people in all, about 80 adults and 30 kids, that’ s more than we had at our wedding! We knew we’d have to plan everything out ahead of time and that’s what we did. I had a detailed to do list for everyone for every day leading up to the party and for the day of. We had to borrow tables and chairs and set everything up so that people can spread out and not be crammed in one area. Dan wired the backyard with speakers, so we can play music all day, and I have to say he did an excellent job with that!

Since we cook all of the food ourselves, it was important to have a schedule and stick to it, for feeding that large of a crowd is no easy task and I didn’t want to simply have burgers and hot dogs. It’s too boring and people are sick of it by the end of summer. So, here’s the menu that we prepared:

~~ Appetizers ~~
Chips/Pretzels/Corn Chips with Mango Salsa
Plantain Chips with Guacamole, Veggies with Ranch Dip, Cheese with crackers
Bruschetta on Garlic Toasts
Grilled shrimp with outback's dipping sauce
Chicken Satay with Peanut Dipping Sauce
Mini Swedish meatballs

~~ Cold Sides ~~
Autumn Salad (Romaine, Dried Cranberries, Fresh Apples, Gorgonzola Cheese, Roasted Walnuts and Balsamic Dressing)
Cole Slaw, Pasta Salad, Olivie (Russian potato salad)

~~ Hot Sides ~~
Oven roasted potatoes, Mac n cheese

~~ Main Entrees (catered by Attilios) ~~
Baked Ziti
Penne with Vodka Sauce
Meatballs
Chicken Francese

~~ On the Grill (Uncle Dan’s Task) ~~
BBQ Chicken drum sticks
Russian chicken kabobs
Hot dogs

~~ Dessert ~~
Fruit salad
Chocolate chip cookies, Rugalas, Brownie Bites, Cream puffs
S'mores

~~ Drinks ~~
Juice boxes, Water, Soda
Beer/Wine
Peach Iced Tea
White and Red Sangria
Mango Martinis (Mango vodka & mango nectar, garnished with strawberry)
Apple Martinis garnished with cherries

It was really great to see everyone, old friends and new. We had a bouncy house set up for kids, and volleyball and cornhole toss game for adults. Ice King even made us a luge ice sculpture to do shots! It was pretty cool! And in the evening we lit up the firepit and sat around roasting marshmallows. The Christmas lights around the deck and tiki torches made it look very festive.

It was a day full of excitement and fun, and definitely one we’ll remember for years to come! Happy 11th Anniversary to Us!