Vegan Alcohol

I've ordered the vegan wine, beer and liquor!  Not every vegan worries about whether fish bladders are used in the processing of alcohol, and I don't look down on them for it.  Even if you don't, though, you're bound to have lots of vegan guests at your wedding, so it's important to make sure that everyone's comfortable. 
I'm providing the alcohol for the wedding, rather than the caterer.  It saves money if your venue and caterer allow for that!  So I found a great place to order for the PA/DE/MD/NJ area (Franks Union Wine store - www.frankswine.com), and Frank even helped me with checking on the veganness of certain suggested alcohols.  He now knows Barnivore.com - you probably already knew about it yourself, though.

Vegan Ballroom Shoes

We started our dance lessons, and, determined to take ballroom dancing back up on a longer-term basis, we invested in some ballroom dance shoes.  It's very hard to find nonleather ones (because leather soles are what ballroom shoes usually rely on to help you glide across the floor), but we found really great ones at this site (and they were helpful in guiding our size choice).

http://www.steponedanceshoes.com/vegan_dance_shoes

Vegan Tuxedo Shoes

Buy4Less Tuxedo had a couple of nice tuxedo shoe options that they were able to confirm as 100% synthetic, so the guys got to choose between these two.  Nick's Cosmopolitan pair is already here and looks good.

http://www.buy4lesstuxedo.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=Cosmopolitan-Jean-Yves-Black-Tuxedo-Shoes

http://www.buy4lesstuxedo.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=Genoa-Black-Jean-Yves-Tuxedo-Shoes

The Tuxedo Decision

We went with MensUSA and are getting a poly-rayon/viscose blend.  It's a little hard to navigate their website and find the vegan options, but I called 1-888-784-8872 and spoke to Liz (x224).  She set us up with a great two-button tuxedo package, including a silk-free bowtie & cummerbund.  Liz was not only helpful and confidence-inspiring, but also gave us a great discount, making MensUSA the best price I found.  We're looking at buying for not much more than the guys would have paid to rent a tux.  And they'll have a nice one that they can hang onto.  (Discounts at other places for the bulk order were not quite as steep, keeping those sites at about $250 for the package.)  Every store that I spoke with said that the poly-rayon blend is significantly nicer than the straight poly fabric, but you can also cut costs down by another $20-40 by going with straight poly.

Unfortunately MensUSA doesn't have a nonleather tux shoe option, so we will have to find those separately for the guys who don't already own tux shoes.  Info coming soon - I have emails in to confirm the 100% leather-free nature of some shoes I found.

Vegan Tuxedos & Tux Shoes

So, any rental tux will be wool.  Nick and the groomsmen will have to buy non-wool tuxedos.  I talked to someone at Jos A Bank (met him at a bridal show) who said we could special order non-wool ones, but lost his contact info.  I may start from scratch with Jos A Bank, or might start from scratch elsewhere.  Here's one option that might be vegan that I found online: http://www.tuxedosdirect.com/product/view.php?product_id=178066&category_id=007985.  This is probably the store where we'll buy the vegan tux shoes as well: http://www.tuxedosdirect.com/category/008123.shtml.  We can get the whole tux set for under $200 here, though: http://www.cheaptux.com/products/Standard-Polyester-Tuxedo-Package.html.  I have no clue how to gauge the quality of what we're dealing with, and am not sure how to tell the difference.  I don't want to make the guys spend any more money than they need to, but I don't want them to end up with junk.  We shall see.  Luckily this does not have to be decided now.  The bridesmaid dresses got ordered in time, and this shouldn't require nearly as much time to get done.

Vegan Entrees

I'm pretty excited about the wedding food.  We're getting our act together in choosing entrees.  Initially, I wanted one seitan and one tofu dish.  I've moved a bit away from that, because the tofu dish I insisted on got wrinkled noses from my dad and my MOH when we went to do a tasting with the caterer (Karen's Catering).  It was a salmon-inspired dish that I had suggested, and even though it wasn't fishy tasting at all, the notion of a tofu dish that sort of reminded people of salmon was appalling to them as non-vegans.  (For those in Philly, think pacific-rim grilled tofu from Horizons/Vedge - it's a delish meal.)  Anyway, the seitan chimichurri stays.  It was awesome - my dad loved it too.  Enter also white bean ravioli (yum!) and phyllo veggie pockets over risotto.  I'm pretty sure most of my non-vegan guests will go for the ravioli, because it's closest to their comfort zone.  Maybe some more adventurous folks will try the seitan, though!  By the way, it's http://karenscatering.org/  the .com address is some other catering company that I know nothing about. 

Vegan Shoes, Part II

The shoes came.  They're adorable, as expected.  The other pair I got that were on sale were adorable too (also NeuAura, but I don't want to brag too much, because I'm pretty sure they were the last pair of them on the planet).  I'm going to get some sort of cushion for the ball of my foot.  I have narrow feet, so often the straps at the front aren't tight enough on their own. I've also ordered a clear strap to keep them very securely on.  Not ordinarily something I'd do, but I can be clumsy in high heeled sandals, and biting it on my wedding day is less than ideal.  Here's what I ordered: https://www.appledanceshoes.com/ClearElasticShoeStraps. Chose that store because with the free shipping it was super inexpensive ($6).

Vegan Shoes

Last Fall I went to Moo Shoes in NYC, mainly to browse. I saw a cute pair of NeuAura sandals that I thought would be perfect for my wedding. And they were on sale, and they had size 7 available. Well, it turns out in NeuAura, I'm definitely more of a 6/6.5 (news to vegan shoe shoppers, 6 and 6.5 are actually the same size at NeuAura because they're European sizing). They didn't have my size. But I did find a lovely pair of work shoes at Moo Shoes (Elm, in black http://www.neuaurashoes.com/elm-black/) that are cute and comfy and stylish. A hard-to-find combo in vegan shoes, I'll admit. I balked at the $110 price tag, but I was feeling like a nice splurge, and when I walked around in them they felt so good. Alas, no wedding shoes.

Fast forward to April, and I don't yet have my wedding shoes, and haven't really seen anything great in the vegan shoe market, or at least not affordable. I saw some that I could get shipped from the UK, but at $250, and without knowing whether they'd fit . . . That's a tough sell for me.

So I started thinking there must be other stores that sell NeuAura besides Moo Shoes and ordering directly from NeuAura. The shoes are probably last summer's style, and definitely not on the NeuAura website (and they aren't making anything similar right now). Thank you Google! Nancy's Gone Green! sells them! http://www.nancysgonegreen.com/neuaura-aspen-sequin-evening-sandals-heels-in-silver-white.html $30, I like that price! And the code "facebook10" gets you a nice 10% off, so I helped myself to another cute pair of NeuAuras, 'cause why not?

I'm not sure where I was going to look next if I didn't find these. I was definitely worried. Places I checked (and that are worth generally checking) included Moo Shoes and Vegan Chic. I probably would have spent some time on Zappos, which does have a lot of vegan shoes if you figure out how to look for them. I'm just glad I didn't end up at Payless a week before the wedding grabbing something just barely tolerable. I probably shouldn't speak so soon, the shoes haven't arrived yet and I don't want to what's the vegan equivalent of counting-my-chickens-before-they-hatch?

Check back for men's vegan tux shoes!

Bridesmaid Dresses

It's so much easier to get non-silk bridesmaids dresses. There are a lot of satins (avoid "silk-satin" which is common in wedding dresses, less so in bridesmaid) and synthetic chiffons. There are even silk imitations.

I had some confusion when I called Dessy Group to find out if Alfred Angelo's Peau de Soie and Dupioni fabrics were real silk. I was told they were, but when I went to a store, lo and behold, 100% polyester.

We're going with Bill Levkoff satin dresses, ordering through Demetrios at Macy's. They have periodic sales, so look out for those. I thought about using RK Bridal's online no frills program, but it seemed to risky.

Wedding Dresses

My MOH and I went to one bridal shop where every dress except for two ugly ones was silk (or had some silk). They told me for non-silk to go to David's Bridal. If you've seen mean girls, it was like when Rachel McAdams went to the store 1-3-5 and couldn't fit into the size 5, and the store employee told her to try Sears. When she saw my face fall, she suggested Alfred Angelo (a fine option, actually). There are, in fact, plenty of vegan wedding dresses, by different designers.

I got a beautiful lace one by Watters. Lace is a great option (as long as the lining isn't silk). You'll want to avoid the really high end designers, but you don't have to go to David's Bridal if you don't want to. There was also a cute one at a bridal consignment shop (also a very good option for dress shopping) that I just didn't fall in love with on the spot (and if you don't get it on the spot when there's only one of it, that's pretty much the end of the story).

Call the store in advance and ask them to tell you how many non-silk dresses they have, or at least confirm that they have a bunch. I actually had done this with the store that only had 3. So it's no guarantee you won't be disappointed, but it's often helpful. Lovely in NYC was kind enough to figure out what was vegan in anticipation of my arrival, so no time was wasted. The Bridal Garden in NJ was also great, and that's where I ended up buying.

Caterers

The food at our wedding will all be vegan. I mean this in the strictest sense of "There will be bridal tears if this aspect gets messed up." How do you make that clear to the caterer and make sure you have a caterer who you trust with this?

My venue had a list of caterers. Bringing in an outside caterer who specializes in vegan food would have cost us an extra $3000 fee. So I went to work calling each caterer on the list, talking about their ideas and my ideas, and getting pricing. I was not happy with the first caterer I spoke with, and that made me very worried about how it would work out. But in going through the list, about 5 of the caterers were pretty excited about the potential opportunity, had done some vegan foods before, and didn't seem like they were flat out lying to me. For example, a claim in Philadelphia of "I've done a lot of vegan weddings before" sounds like a lie or like maybe they don't know what I mean by a vegan wedding.

We did tastings with 3 caterers, and settled on Karen's Catering. She really blew us away with the hors d'ouvres especially. And we'll be able to give a choice of 3 delicious entrees.

Choosing a Venue

It doesn't seem like you should have to worry about choosing your wedding venue as a vegan... but some wedding venues have exclusive contracts with one caterer. If the caterer isn't enthusiastic about making the vegan food you want, you probably want to choose a different venue. I scrapped two venues because I didn't like their exclusive caterers. Exclusive catering arrangements also usually mean a higher cost per guest.