The Catering Conspiracy

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.