Weddingbee Blog

Planning from afar for an in-the-middle-of-nowhere wedding isn’t as effortless as it sounds! Our main problem so far has been in trying to nail down a caterer, since we’re doing almost everything by email but are a bit hesitant to commit to anything without meeting in person, trying food, etc.

At the moment, we have two top runners, but problems with both of them. The first caterer, who I’ll call K, is someone who was recommended to us by a restaurant we love up there (we asked if they cater and they don’t, so they gave us her name). Her site looked very impressive, so we have emailed back and forth a bit. She seemed very nice, had good ideas, and we met with her in person back in early June to go over possibilities and it went well.

However, since then, she has been very slow at getting back to us. Two or three weeks pass, then a “Sorry I haven’t been able to answer your questions yet, I’ve been on vacation” or “My computer was acting up” or “It’s been really busy.” I understand that this is probably her busiest season right now, and we haven’t actually committed to her, so it might not be in her best interest to jeopardize any of her current clients for someone like us, but shouldn’t she be trying to get our business? Other than my slightly iffy feelings based on her slow response time, she seems great. She was recommended by people I trust (though we will also ask her for references for other weddings she has done), was very personable and helpful, has reasonable rates and a great sounding menu. But I’m just getting a little discouraged. I’m sure she’d be more responsive closer to the wedding and once we’ve actually committed to her, but I can’t really know that until after we take the plunge.

Our second possibility is A. He catered my brother’s wedding up there this June and had such a wonderful time doing it (loved our family’s house and history and people) that he literally begged me to let him do my wedding too, when he heard Mr Bluebell and I were engaged and also getting married up there. My main reason for not wanting to use him is just that he did my brother’s wedding! The food was amazing and everyone loved it, but we will be having a LOT of guest overlap, plus we’re getting married in the same exact place, so I’m already struggling with ways to make our wedding seem completely different and distinct so it isn’t “just another Bluebell sibling wedding.”

They are actually a vegetarian restaurant that only does catering occasionally (their screening process is largely whether they think the wedding sounds “fun” enough, hehe), so I know they’d have different actual dishes than what was served at my brother’s wedding, but I’m worried it will still have the same basic look and feel. Also, I LOOOOOVE cheese so we were planning to start with a big cheese spread - guess how my brother’s wedding started! So even if we have different appetizers and entrees, the cheese table will probably look the same. Plus since everyone loved all the food, I’m scared people will say, “Why didn’t you get those mushroom puffs?!? They were my favorite thing last time!”

The other thing holding us back from going with A is that because their business is almost entirely supported by the restaurant, they only choose to cater weddings where it’s “worth their while,” which they described to my brother as essentially coming down to offering an open bar through them. We were originally hoping to provide our own alcohol and have people serve themselves to cut down on the cost there (informal outdoor buffet wedding), so having to pay the extra however many dollars a head for an open bar we didn’t want in the first place isn’t that appealing. So taking that into account they are considerably more expensive than going with K would be.

But…we’ve been dragging our feet on calling A so we haven’t actually gotten any estimates from him, nor do we know if they are actually available for our date or, well, anything else! All of our information there is just based on what my brother and sister-in-law told us from their discussions. Plus I’m secretly hoping he’ll give us a hefty discount just because he wants to come back to our family house again since he reeeeeally did seem to enjoy it last time.

So what we need to do now is:

1) Call A and actually talk to him about whether they’re available that day, what they would charge us, how different they could make it “feel” from my brother’s wedding without making the food any less tasty, and if there’s a possibility of not doing open bar.

2) Call K and actually talk to her! Get her to answer some of those questions we asked weeks ago….and get references.

3) Contact more people?!? The only other people we contacted were already booked for our date! (Oh, and also there was the person who is now just a “party planner”) I’ve done a ton of searching but there really just isn’t much up there, so I’m feeling discouraged about this too…like I really need to just suck it up and either commit to K or get the ball rolling quickly with A.

Ack, so what do you think I should do? We’re actually heading upstate today (YAY!) until Tuesday so I was hoping to meet with someone to make this weekend at least slightly productive. I just got my first email in weeks from K this morning saying she can’t meet with us this weekend since she has a wedding, but she might not have realized we were staying until Tuesday. I’m getting SO STRESSED about this decision and just want it to be done already. I really think either A or K would probably work out great, but for the reasons listed above I’m having a reeeeeally hard time just pulling the trigger on either of them. I’m also starting to worry that other people are going to book them before we can decide, and then there will be no one to cater our wedding, for which we’ve already reserved the date….eeeeeeek. Help me!!!!

~~~

After the fact poll addition:

If I had to make a decision right this minute based only on current information, who do you think I should choose? The obvious real answer being to talk to everyone more and get more info…but based only on this, what do you think?