LOCAL CUISINE CATERING NIGHTMARES
Bridezillas and Other Wedding Horrors Brides behaving badly certainly is a stereotype. Yet there are times when this is exactly what happens, and if it isn’t the bride, then the mother of the bride, the father of the groom or one of the guests is more than happy to step in and make it a party to remember – for all the wrong reasons. Kitos remembers one bride that inspired such fear, not just in the catering crew, but also in her expected guests, that 300 sent in RSVPs that they would attend,
but only 100
actually showed up. Then there was the wedding with an invite list that included most of the membership lists of two rival gangs. At the reception, just like on the streets, the gangs divided up the room with each controlling half. But even this was not enough and the reception erupted into a gang war that only stopped when the police poured into the hall.
One hotel caterer recalls meeting with a bride and her mother to finalize the seating chart for the reception. Up to that point, the caterer had never met the daughter. All the initial planning had been done with the mother who had not said a single positive thing about her daughter; it was all criticism. And when the two of them arrived for that final meeting the mother announced: “I just want you to know that we are not speaking right now, and so you are going to have to figure out how to place the guests and talk to us each individually.”
spent the next three hours trapped in a room between the two of them as they fought about seating 150 guests without ever speaking to each other directly.
“It was the longest three
hours of my life,” the caterer says. Of course this didn’t bode well for
the wedding itself, and at the reception a couple off the street accidentally walked into the room just as
the
cake was to be cut. The mother of the bride saw them and charged, literally screaming that they couldn’t be there. Later she demanded the hotel refund all their money, claiming that the staff had not done their job because two uninvited guests had walked into the
172 SPOKANE CDA • February • 2012
room and she missed the cutting of the cake. Another caterer tells about the bride
in Montana who arrived at the site of the wedding and reception completely drunk. The bridesmaids managed to get her from the car to the dressing room, but soon reappeared with a request for food. They asked for bread and crackers – presumably in an attempt to soak up excess alcohol and steady the bride. The intoxicated bride did manage to
navigate the ceremony without major incident other than her obviously bloodshot eyes, but at the reception she got progressively more and more drunk. By the toast she was slurring thickly and mumbling all outlandish things.
kinds of
He was furious, but also had a back-up plan in the form of a smuggled-in flask. All three of them probably need to get to know the woman invited to another wedding who ended up so compromised that she simply walked outside, lifted up her dress, and relieved herself on the pavement.
Yet no one could figure out where
she was getting the liquor. All of the catering crew had been explicitly instructed to not to serve her anything with
alcohol. The caterer Only later did they
discover that she—and her mother— had hidden a bottle of vodka in the dressing room, and the two of them had been slipping away throughout the night to down shots together. Her last
disappearance to the
dressing room for a shot sealed the deal. She never made it back to the reception. Instead she passed out and threw up all over her dress. When it came time for the couple to leave, the groom had to physically carry the unconscious bride out to limousine. That particular bride and her mother should have met the father of the groom from another wedding who volunteered to pay for all the booze and drank so much that the catering crew were forced to cut him off at 8 p.m.
Straight-Up Food Disasters Certainly, though, not all the catering nightmares are a result of unreasonable clients or out-of-control guests, and not all involve alcohol. One caterer remembers a party she planned for her own mother where she requested huckleberry lemonade. Given that huckleberries are a Northwest specialty, this request didn’t seem unreasonable or particularly complicated. The problem was that the only huckleberry product in the kitchen at the time was a marinade, and the cook assigned the job figured he could make it work. The result—which the guests actually drank to the horror of the host—was punchbowl full of lemonade that had chunks of onion and garlic bobbing on the surface along with the requested berries. This same kitchen crew also managed to embalm another regional treasure—salmon—in a clear jello (aspic). No catering client previously had requested aspic, and the kitchen’s attempt arrived at the buffet table looking good, but under a layer of gelatin so thick and impervious to attack that the guests never got a bite. The best they could do was simply admire the perfect salmon inside its jello coffin.
There are stories of food poisoning of course – don’t order
sushi for
300 for an outdoor wedding in the middle of the summer. Mayonnaise- based preparations in August are also tempting fate. Trying to prepare and plate a dinner for hundreds in a building without running water is also nigh impossible.
Then there is the location issue. One caterer arrived at the lakeside site designated for an event only to find a ski boat waiting. She was informed that the wedding in question was actually
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