Well, I’m writing this so I can look back 20 years from now and laugh.
2 weeks ago we finally nailed down the menu with the chef doing our catering. We haven’t been too happy with him because he is hard to get a hold of, and promised to basically do all of the planning on the wedding, renting of tables, china, flatware, chairs, etc. Basically, he made it sound like we would tell him we had X people coming and he would do the rest which is the major reason we were willing to pay ALOT for the site (which he also owns).
Sunday, 14 days out from the wedding Becky was finally able to talk to our french chef about the final costs for the food. We were told, 4 months ago, that $20/head would not be a problem. We re-iterated to him at our meeting that we HAD to stick with $20/head. Well, you can guess, he says he can do it for $26/head. When Becky says, “How can we get that alittle lower” he goes off on this rant about how he’s so great, and he has to pay these people to help him (which he also quoted to us that WE had to pay them $400 for the night), etc. etc. and how if we can’t do that, we need to call another caterer. Needless to say, we were livid.
So Becky remembers one of her co-workers talking about a wedding he worked as staff at a few weeks ago. So she asks him about it and not only does he work for a catering company, he’s part owner and he’ll call his wife who runs it and she can work with us. So we do and everything seems great. They can do dinner for $17.95/head, they can do it that day, etc. etc.
Becky came home for lunch (this was yesterday) and we decided to stop by the caterer because they office is about 10 blocks from our house. They hand us a proposal, and yes, the food is $17.95, but they also need to hire waiters. No problem I think. WRONG.
This is what they define as “waiters”: *Team Lead - $25/hr for 6.5 hours (includes 1 hour of driving from their office to the site) *3 “waiters” - $19.95 for 6.5 hours EACH *1 cook - $25/hr for 4 hours. *1 dish washer - $17.50/hr for 4 hours *1 chef for carving station - Free (WHOOPEEEEEE!)
Oh, and, not only this, they have the balls to charge us, get this, 18% gratunity included on the entire price of the food. Not optional, like, we HAVE to pay them. I’m sorry, you’re a f*cking waiter, no way I’m paying you $25/hr AND 18% tip. That’s crazy. Completely and totally nuts. And, on top of all of this, they wanted to add a bartender to open wine bottles and, I guess, pump the keg. Oh, and it might get dark before they are done washing dishes, so we need to rent lights they can turn on.
So, what does their $18/head dinner end up? $28.71/head. Yeah, thanks, thanks for working with us to come in under $26/head you f*cking jackasses.
Luckily, the french man had a change of heart today and called Becky at work to say that he was sorry, and he could bring it down to $22/head and $350 for wait staff. So yeah, in other words, we didn’t need go through any of this.
To the youngin’s out there, NEVER GET MARRIED. ELOPE, RUN AWAY!!!!!!!