Royal Wedding party Commonwealth spread

It’s the Royal Wedding, and we’re throwing a party! To make things interesting, we kicked off with some art and craft – everyone had to make and wear a crown using the card, scissors, felt tips, glitter pens, sequins, glue and tape provided, with some quite impressively creative results.

Ready for the Crown-making competition

We had a Commonwealth Realm theme, so all the flags on the table were from the 16 realms that still recognise HRH as their Queen and will one day be under William’s rule – and all the food and drink served was from one of those countries. So we kicked off with Bajan Sunrise cocktails (Barbados) along with Lamingtons (Australian), Anzac biscuits (New Zealand), coconut bread (St Kitts and Nevis) and banana bread (Bahamas). I found commemorative William and Catherine chocolate coins in Sainsbury’s, so scattered those about too.

Lamingtons and Anzac biscuits with commemorative chocolate coins

I made sweet potato crisps (Papua New Guinea) to have with drinks as people arrived, which looked better than they tasted, to be perfectly honest. And it looked a little like pot pourri.

Sweet potato crisps

The first main was Grenadian roast pork, served with a black bean, heart of palm and corn salad and a warm ginger and orange sauce on a bed of spinach with sliced avocado. The general consensus was that it would be a great dinner party dish – it’s delicious and looks great on a platter, but could be fabulous served in individual portions of spinach leaves, topped with bean salad, surrounded by pork and avocado interlapped slices and finished with the ginger sauce and parsley.

Roast pork and avocado with spinach and bean salad, garnished with parsley

We had champagne chilling and ready for the balcony kiss (opened and poured by D, our resident expert in fizz).

Chilled and fizzy

At this point we started to soak up the booze with more food – jerk chicken (Jamaica) and hard-boiled egg and potato salad (Belize).

Spicy Jamaican jerk chicken

Belize potato salad with boiled eggs and mixed vegetables

It was a fab day all round; a great crowd and some fabulous laughs. I think we might do something similar for the Jubilee or the Olympics next year, when H has forgotten how much washing up it created!

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