Steak! Cheesecake! Salads! All About Tim Tebow's 'Keto-Friendly' Wedding Reception

When you’re a 6’3″, 255-lb. athlete like Tim Tebow, a proper diet is extremely important.

For Tebow, his Keto diet was so important to him that it influenced the reception menu at his wedding to new wife Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters.

“We wanted to have food that everyone could eat,” Nel-Peters — who notes she spent a long time getting everything “just perfect” for the big day — says in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. “So we chose a mixture of American and South African dishes. It was a perfect blend of both cultures.”

Some of the food was definitely not Keto-friendly, including the pastas, pumpkin pies and the fried oreos. But Tebow and Nel-Peters made sure that there were several low-carb Keto items that even the athlete could eat.

“We have steak, hollowed-out cheese bowls with melted cheese, and salads,” says Nel-Peters. “One of the big things we have is a special salad that we make all the time. It has baby spinach, bacon, berries, cucumbers, vinegar and olive oil. It’s such a simple salad, but we eat it all the time and it’s delicious. So we wanted it to be part of the wedding.”

The former NFL quarterback and the Miss Universe 2017 said “I do” in an intimate sunset wedding at La Paris Estate in Cape Town, South Africa on Monday. After the outdoor ceremony, guests walked into a custom-made glass-topped tent made by Downings Marquee for the reception.

In addition to the couple’s traditional 10-tiered white wedding cake with gold accents, Tebow had a groom’s cake that would fit into his diet: a Keto-friendly cheesecake.

“I wanted him to have something that he could eat without any guilt,” laughs Nel-Peters. “It’s our special day, and I want him to have whatever he wants. Everything needed to be perfect.”

For more about Tim Tebow and Demi-Leigh Nel-Peter’s wedding, including never-before-seen photos of the ceremony and reception, pick up this week’s PEOPLE, on news stands Friday.