Preparing to do BATTLE

This past weekend, I regaled and horrified some friends with the details of our catering situation. Since this week will hopefully bring the disaster to a close, I figured I'd mention it here.

During the hunt for a reception venue last summer, it became apparent that most places only have specific caterers that they work with. Many places like hotels and privately owned facilities simply do not allow outside catering of any kind. Most of them only use one caterer, but a few have a short list of "approved" caterers. The Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens was one such place.

For this reason, and the extremely affordable rate they offered for one of their smaller off-site venues, Phipps seemed like the right choice.

Out of the three catering options, one was clearly the "budget" choice (Big Burrito, for the local folks who know them). Their menu looked great though: not too frou-frou but not rigatoni and dried out chicken either. The others were WAY out of our league. One of which was Phipps' own catering service, that handles all of the catering for the fancy special events at the actual Conservatory (which as I mentioned before is *not* where our reception will be held).

Sooo...based off the knowledge that we could choose Big Burrito as our catering service, we chose the low-key, off-site Phipps facility.

Some time passed until we had to sign the contract and give them the deposit. When that day came in early October of last year, we did so, and the Phipps event coordinator made no mention of the disasterous situation that loomed before us.

About a month after we signed the contract, I got a "By the way..." email from the event coordinator. Apparently, Phipps had decided NOT to renew their contracts with their outside caterers for 2011!!!

What did this mean for us? Well, now we would be FORCED into using the crazy expensive Phipps catering service. How expensive is it? Let me put it this way: the estimated cost of the catering was what we had planned on spending for the entire wedding. Obviously, we had a big problem with this sudden development and felt it was totally unfair to charge us their standard catering rates we chose to avoid in the first place.

The event coordinator put me in touch with the catering coordinator, a fella named Jeff. I explained my situation to Jeff. Initially, he was kind of a dick about it. He slipped in little annoying comments here and there like, "Well you see, we usually handle all kinds of exclusive sit-down events...like when Obama was here for the G20." That's great, I don't effin' care.

To make matters worse, because I chose the off-site facility (it's in Mellon Park), Phipps could not provide any of the linens, tableware and cake for the event (they usually do so for all events held at the Conservatory).

How they couldn't transport that stuff in a van the 2 miles from the Conservatory to the site is beyond me. But whatever, that's not their policy. Their policy states that I must ONLY work with their designated vendors of these items who then work with Phipps to pile their charges on top of Phipps' charges so we get one lovely combined bill...that has to be paid in full 2 weeks before the event.

AHHHHHHHHHHH!

Jeff gave me the vendors contact information and the stack of frou-frou menu options to choose from. Our job was to review the menus and pick out stuff we liked and then Jeff would work with us to create a custom buffet that would in theory be much less expensive than the initial quotes he gave us.

The next step is sitting down with him, finalizing the menu, working up a contract and giving him the mandatory 20% deposit based off the final estimated cost.

This is all scheduled to happen tomorrow at 10am. Fun times!

Even though my Dad is playing a fairly small role in our wedding, I asked him to come along with me to this meeting as back-up. I know that I will have to negotiate with Jeff on the prices and it might get a little ugly. My Dad is a fantastic negotiator, so I'm glad he is willing to be there with me and jump in to do battle if necessary.

So that's the catering story. Oddly enough, it has been the only snag in the wedding planning thus far! I'm hoping it will be the last (but I've read too many stories that indicate it probably won't)! Ah well...