I was Google Chatting with a friend of mine on her birthday, before she left for dinner with her fiancé. I told her to have a great time at dinner, to which she says,
“Well, I mean, before this it was always which one is he going to propose on (she was only dating him for 3 years before he proposed), after that, it’s just gravy.”
How weird is that. Really. I mean, I don’t think like that.
More tomorrow.
I’m convinced that there is some sort of wedding-site mafia operating in Houston, and if I don’t post tomorrow, will one of my friends let my fiancé know what may have happened to me?
As I said yesterday, I was feeling guilty about going over the budget for the caterer, so I wanted to at least try and do my homework and find another caterer that might be less expensive. One thing I had to keep in mind was that the reception hall would charge a $1500 “surcharge” for using an outside caterer. That’s right, there is a surcharge for going with an outside caterer, along with a 60 day limitation. Not 60 days from the date of the event, which I could understand, or even 6 months from the date of the event, 60 days from the day you sign the contract, whenever that may be (and the outside caterer has to go through an “approval process” within that time frame.
I tried to work with their “in-house” caterer for a while, I really did. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt after the extreme delay in response to the initial quote request. I had sent her a menu selection to get the quote, so I asked if we could do a tasting the next time we were in town, which happened to be a weekend. I asked her if we could schedule a tasting for the upcoming weekend, as we were coming in from out of town. Her response:
“This weekend is not good for me, as we have an event. Actually, weekends are never good, because most of our events occur on the weekend. Let me know what other time works for you.”
I didn’t reply, because I had told her that I couldn’t meet for a while on the weekends. I do understand that most of these vendors will not usually want to meet on the weekends, but most of them have been very understanding, once I explain that we are planning the wedding from out-of-town. One reception site vendor even came in early before the morning reception started out. So, to summarize 1) reception site charges extra to use other caterer, 2) other caterer proves very difficult to meet with, and 3) I only have 60 days to find another caterer.
Recently, I tried to get in touch with the “default” caterer for the reception site. I was less than hopeful, since while we had been deciding between the two reception halls, we had gotten quotes on the catering, and it took 4 days for the woman to get back to me, and from that point, it took another 5 days for her to get back with a quote. What a quote it was, the per-person rate was pretty high. We had thought that one way to bring the cost down was to offer a fruit and cheese display instead of a traditional appetizer. She actually priced that as higher than an appetizer.
We were also somewhat disappointed in the actual selection in the menu choices. Seeing as how this caterer was pretty pricey, we were expecting a nice list. The list of dishes was pretty good, but it basically broke down to we have this many sauces, and we’ll put them on chicken, steak, seafood, or duck.
I decided to at least do my homework to see if I could find a better caterer. So, I found a wonderful website, where I could put in my contact information, and caterers would call me if they were available for the date of our wedding. I put in my information, and not 15 minutes later, the chef/owner of a catering company in Houston called me. She talked about what kinds of foods my fiancé and I liked, and later that evening had faxed me a 5 page menu and 6 different package prices, all of which were less expensive than the “chosen” caterer.
Next Time: My Conspiracy Theory
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