</head>When you're planning an outrageous, dream-come-to-life wedding with food to match, you're not going to settle for gazpacho shooters and smoked salmon blinis. Instead, opt for grilled spring asparagus with fresh-laid eggs, tender braised lamb, and signature cocktails created by some of the country's best restaurants and farms, from Daniel Boulud's flagship restaurant Daniel to a tiny apple farm on the Northern California coast. The dreamy venues below fall under an umbrella we like to call "Fantasy Food Weddings We'll Never Be Able to Afford," but hey, we can dream, right?
Caviar and raw bar stations. Direct access to Daniel's staff to create a completely custom food menu and drinks. A private kitchen tour. A wedding cake and exquisite, mini desserts created by a James Beard Award-nominated pastry chef. And for your guests to take home? Delicate, customized edibles like macarons and bon bons. We'd expect nothing less from Daniel Boulud. "We all know that wedding food has a bad reputation, so to be able to serve Daniel-quality [food] at a wedding is very special for people," says Ehren Jennings, Daniel's private dining director. Of course, it'll cost you. A rep tells Bon Appétit: "With the good stuff (open bar, wedding cake, favors) $275 [per head] is an accurate estimate." And, of course, it could be higher—this is Daniel, after all.
When it's not serving as the location of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue cover shoot, the 4,200-acre Blackberry Farm at the base of Tennessee's dusky Great Smoky Mountains puts on the fantasy food wedding. The Farm's sumptuous, all-weekend affairs showcase the farm-grown, vegetable-heavy fare that brings so many food lovers to this mecca. Go casual with a family-style barbecue with smoked brisket, mac and cheese, and mustard mashed potatoes. Or opt for a luxurious four-course dinner with options like lamb with sunchoke purée and lamb bacon, or a slow-cooked farm egg with smoked mountain trout. Guests can forage with the Farm's gardeners, take in a cooking demo, or hop on a wagon ride around the property with a signature cocktail in hand. If your guests somehow manage to get hungry after your wedding night dinner, worry not: Patty melts, artisanal cheese popcorn, fresh chocolate chip cookies, and other late-night treats will await them off the dance floor. And when the festivities wind down, s'mores and hot cocoa by your own private bonfire sounds about right. To take over the farm with up to 138 guests for your special weekend, it'll cost you—ready for this?—up to $375,000.
If you're comfortable not knowing what your wedding food will be until week before your big day, head to the team at chef Dan Barber's standout farm-to-table restaurant, farm, and events space in Pocantico Hills, just north of NYC. Host your wedding during the heigh of growing season, when 80 percent of the menu is sourced from the surrounding land, and you and your guests will be treated to a four-course tasting menu so fresh you won't even be able to taste it ahead of time. (Ditto for your wedding cake, whose flavor is determined a week in advance.) Blue Hill's director of events Matthew Anderson says the season's ingredients can be so fleeting, there isn't an opportunity to taste the food in advance because the chefs wait until the ingredients are at their very best to serve them. Which is lucky for you, because that means for $345 a head, you can pretty much expect the best grilled asparagus, wild onions, and braised lamb of your life.
No list of fantasy food weddings would be complete without a little Wine Country. Meadowood’s vintner-owned, 250-acre property in dreamy St. Helena is classic Napa Valley. For $350 to $650 a head (not including venue costs), the estate chef will work with you to create a reception and dinner menu that features fresh produce from the property’s gardens. (For spring, think grilled artichoke with lemon aioli and sweet pea agnolotti with pea tendrils and green garlic.) During downtime, guests can learn to mix expert seasonal cocktails in a private class, or you can request to have an afternoon cooking class at one of Meadowood’s winery partners so you can booze and cook. A Meadowood rep says many couples also like to host catered, intimate rehearsal dinners at wineries nearby.
This small heirloom apple farm on the Navarro River by the Northern California coast regularly hosts "Stay and Cook" weekends for guests, so it's no surprise they also know how to put on an intimate food lovers' wedding. For a small wedding party (fewer than 120 guests), co-owner Karen Bates, whose family originally owned the French Laundry, will create a meal using the farm's bounty, which in the spring includes just-laid eggs, asparagus, and black chanterelle mushrooms, along with lamb, goat, and fresh chèvre. For anything on the menu that the farm doesn't grow itself, Bates sources locally. To drink: Wines from local wineries, farm-made hard cider, and apple juice spritzers.
Hipster-chic Longman & Eagle is the best of both worlds: a Michelin-starred restaurant (with a whiskey selection to tempt the most serious sippers) and a tiny boutique hotel (it has just six rooms.) Because of the limited space (the restaurant can seat 60), L&E is the perfect backdrop for an intimate group of close friends and family looking for a not-too-"wedding"-y party. For around $300 a head, chef de cuisine Matt Kerney and pastry chef Jeremy Brutzkus will create a seasonal 5-course tasting menu (8 courses, if you dare). But save room for the excellent cocktails—they'll fuel you throughout the night until 2 a.m., when you can head upstairs and crash.
During the year, Outstanding in the Field hosts traveling dinner parties at some of the country's most spectacular farms and beaches, where they set up their signature long tables outdoors, often in the very fields where the produce on the menu was grown. Just like its normal dinners, Outstanding in the Field will work with you to choose a location (think California, Hawaii) and a celebrated chef from the area, who will create a custom menu full of fresh-from-the-farm ingredients. (If you decide to have your wedding on an oyster farm, for example, you can count on oysters harvested straight from the bay.) Some chefs will supply edible favors like a custom spice blend or baking mix. But your guests might also find their way to the farm's on-site lemon grove or nectarine tree to snag some "favors" to take home with them.