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Saturday, September 28 wedding HO
Being a wedding caterer is a strange friggin way to make a living. Every year from mid September till Early November I go into my 8 weeks of wedding hell. It’s not that catering a wedding is so difficult; it’s that catering 14 weddings in 8 weeks is so $#@%^& difficult. I mean really, why does everyone have to get to married in the fall?! What ever happened to the dad burned spring wedding? Or the magical winter wonderful land wedding??? Or the summer on the beach wedding?! Every year right after Labor Day, I call up all my pals and say my good-byes as if I’m going off to war and …I am. 14 nervous brides, 14 concerned grooms, 28 over-possessive moms, 28 dads who think this is all costing too much, 1 florist I adore, 6 florists who think they’re the ones catering the wedding,1 florist who was so busy name-dropping he was two hours behind in his centerpieces, 1 party planner so pretentious so told her client “one can never have sparkling wine for a toast. It must be champagne from champagne,” two delivery men from the rental company who weighed about 300 pounds each, but refused to carry the tables up the stairs so the 90 pound waiters had to do it, 1 wedding cake made out of Krispy Kreme donuts, one wedding cake made out of 20 chocolate Entenmanns cakes turned into a 16 foot serpent, oh…and a partridge in a pear treeeeeee! It’s not that I’m getting jaded, after 12 years of frantic falls, it’s just that, well I’m starting to feel like a hooker. I am in the business of romance! I crank out nuptial nosh! One thing that always cracks me up is that person who calls me up saying they just got out of cooking school and they want to go into business like me. HA. You think cooking is the biggest part of my business. It’s the entire year of phone calls talking nervous brides off the ledge! It’s the delicate touch it takes to convince the parents of a budding 40-year-old daughter that perhaps, even though they’re paying for the wedding, they might allow their little flower to have some say in the menu. Most people in this century don’t like chicken cordon bleu. I’m more than a caterer! I’m a wedding therapist! Sheesh. I should just hang out the appropriate shingle. Rossi; wedding doctor. Don’t get me wrong; there are rewards for what I do. The most important one is what I call “the morning after call.” It’s the bride and groom at the airport, waiting for their flight to Tahiti, Hey. It’s a great phone call. I usually keep them on my tape and play them back again and again when I have the blues. But this is Sunday morning. Their wedding was Saturday night and I can’t wallow in the loveliness of that phone call. I have another wedding to cater. …In two hours!!!
The other advantage to what I do for a living is that if I make it through the fall, I can look forward to many, many, many glorious days off, a vacation somewhere tropical, and the knowledge that 14 newlywed couples think I’m the best thing since sliced roti (really darlings bread is so passé). Anyway, I’m babbling and I’ve got two weddings to cater in a few hours. One is for a Korean bride and Chilean groom. At this lovely event, I shall be serving empanadas and dumplings. Also across the bridge in Queens, at the same time..I’ll be catering a wedding for a bride extremely concerned with being exotic. At her reception, we’ll be serving Thai shrimp, Jamaican lamb, Japanese noodles and Indian breads. I don’t know why everyone thinks wedding food is so boring. Now then, does anyone know how to stir-fry gefilte fish??
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