Bride Club ME hosts its annual ‘Wedding Industry Iftar’ in association with The Engage Academy

Earlier this month, team Bride Club ME hosted our second annual wedding industry iftar, in association with our sister company, ‘The Engage Academy’. The venue of choice this year was the super stylish ‘Culinary Boutique’ based in Jumeriah One. Each year, we try to select a venue that’s a little different from your standard hotel buffet. Last year, we sailed the ocean and landed on one of the world islands, dining at ‘Lebanon’. This year, we chose the beautiful Culinary Boutique due to its modern, fresh interiors and gorgeous private space, which was ideal for hosting our guests. In addition to this, the restaurant’s delicious set iftar menu worked perfectly, as we did not want to go down the traditional iftar buffet route.

15 guests attended, most of who are listed Bride Club ME vendors. We had a nice mix of professionals at the table, including stationery designers, wedding planners, celebrants, make-up artists and more.

As always, since we represent the ‘visually pleasing’ (aka pretty!) wedding industry, we ensured that attention to detail was our main priority with regard to the décor. Using the impressive black wall in our private space, we opted to add some magic by using the services of E-Walls. We chose to have the words ‘Ramadan Kareem’ placed against the dark wall in copper/gold tones and a stylish calligraphy font. The gold and copper tones complimented the gorgeous rustic feel of the tablespace, along with the tall copper cage lanterns. The whole set up looked stunning.

At each place setting were personalised nametags designed by our friends over at The Party. The nametags were made from solid wood in a gorgeous copper hue, with black acrylic letters – once again in calligraphy style font – spelling out each guest’s name. To accompany the nametags were giveaways courtesy of Mylist.ae in the form of intricate copper boxes filled with delicious dates, completed with black silk ribbon and personalised tags.

For refreshing and unique beverages, we worked with Adam at Aura Beverage Consultancy. Aura Beverage Consultancy specialises in the creation of beverage concepts for the hospitality industry, and we were lucky enough to have them creating delicious mocktails onsite for our guests. The team beautifully decorated a bespoke bar and devised a special menu just for our event. My personal favourite concoction was the ‘Lavender Delight’ mocktail. Lot’s of our guests were snapping away on their phones and capturing the pretty instagram worthy cocktails to share on their accounts.

The set iftar menu for the evening included delicious dishes such as harira soup, lamb kofta on a bed of cous cous, salads, roasted seabass, chicken tagine, cauliflower fritters with yoghurt and mint dip, as well as delicious deserts including brownies with chocolate sauce and halva ice-cream. Our vegan and vegetarian guests were well provided for, with their own personalised menus.

Guests mingled and networked with one another over delicious food, and a wonderful evening was had by all. We would like to extend a very special thank you to our partners Mylist.ae, Aura Beverage Consultancy, E-Walls Designers and The Party for adding their flare to our event. We are so grateful to Heather and her team at The Culinary Boutique for their hospitality and divine food. Finally, a big thank you also goes out to Nabeela Huda for her wonderful photography skills, clearly shown throughout the gorgeous images that accompany this post. Such a talent!

We look forward to next year’s iftar, and are already thinking about unique venues in which to hold it!