So I haven’t talked about our caterer or our food plans yet! I hear you yelling, “You’ve only got 5 months, Miss Cinnamon Bun, better get on that!”
Not to worry, we’re on it. We actually started meeting with and interviewing caterers in September.
Cinnamon Buns suggested the caterer that does all the opening nights at the theatre he works at, and I said, “Yeah, sure,” then went on to do all this research on all these caterers, and didn’t contact our work contact. When we started getting quotes back with heart attack-inducing figures ($6000+ for 65 people? And that doesn’t include booze?!) and fancy menu items like “Quail Egg with crisp lardons of prosciutto [sic], savory basil pesto & wild hibiscus crowns” I got scared off and ignored the whole thing for a while.
(I don’t want to eat this! Or its eggs!)
Then we did it Cinnamon Buns’ way.
We went in to work on a day off, and spoke to the person who contacts the caterer for work events. We went in to ask her what her experience is like with them: Cinnamon Buns and I eat their food at least 5 times a year, so we knew what that was like, but we wanted to know how the experience was from the organizing side. Our friend/coworker gave a glowing review, and then right there in front of our eyes, sent an email off to the owner of the catering company, telling him how two lovely employees are getting married and she recommended that we go with him, and they’re poor little artists…OK, well I think she was joking about the ‘poor little artists’ bit (including it, I mean. It is true!) but that informal meeting was great to have. Our manager friend also said that she’s always glad to refer people, because it shows the caterer she trusts him, and he knows that if he keeps up with the great service, he’ll get more business through the relationship.
After our little pow-wow we went home and drafted our own email to the caterer, telling him how much we like his food, and that we’d love to meet with him and chat. He was totally responsive to this, and sent us a quote for what we’d outlined, then we agreed to meet to chat.
Can I just say a few things about the other caterers we contacted? Everyone talks about going and doing tastings and trying food and everything…no one I talked to wanted to do that. They wanted me to read their quote, and then book them? What up with that? Some said that we could taste, but that would cost money so it would basically be buying a meal from them. We met with one lady in person. I was under the impression it was a tasting, but it ended up just being a meeting (that she was late for, BTW). She also never ever sent us the quote she promised after our meeting, even after some nudging! They got struck off the list. So did the guy who somehow got the impression that I was planning this remotely from Australia. Weirdo. (To this day, I don’t get it. All our contact was by email, so he can’t even say, “oh, I thought you sounded Australian.” Do I type Australian?!)
So we met up with our work-connected caterer at a Starbucks one afternoon in October, and just chatted about what he could provide, things in the quote menu, what the reception would be like, where it was, and it was awesome. He’s totally ok with us bringing pie, and his staff cutting it. He said we could ask his staff to do whatever we wanted really, cut pie, serve ice cream—they’re there for us! The even better part is that his quote, including labour, tea & coffee, all bar supplies (except alcohol, but including mixers, lemon wedges, etc) is half the amount I’d been quoted by other caterers.
At the end of it, he said that if we wanted he would reserve the date for us. Of course we wanted! The even better thing was that he didn’t need a deposit right then. He said that the date was ours, and if someone else tried to book it he’d call us and we could get a deposit to him then! We never got that call but we got some wedding money from my parents at Christmas, so we put some money down so our date could be written in his calendar in pen. I wasn’t really worried about him forgetting and our date being booked by someone else, but I felt like blogging about our caterer and even our food ideas would be jinxing it, until we had the money down.
The deposit is paid, we have the receipt, so I can finally say that our caterers are: Sorrenti’s! If I’d listened to Cinnamon Buns in the first place, we never would have had to contact other caterers.
Have you ever gone full circle looking and looking and looking for something, before deciding on the thing that was right under your nose in the first place?
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