As I was driving up the Provo Canyon this last weekend I saw a ton of "so-and-so wedding" signs and it sparked the wedding chapters in my mind. I'm going to do it in two chapters because the Royal Wedding needs its own.
Chapter 5
The first summer that I worked at The Resort we did several weddings. Guests paid a lot of money for their family and friends to stay the night, location reservations, catering, decorations etc...so you'd think that everything would be flawless. Think again. The Catering Manager, the Banquet Manager, the Executive Chef, the Banquet Chef, and the Pastry Chef had never sat down to discuss what options are and are not feasible for a wedding. And somehow their subordinates never coordinated either, thus creating wedding panic all the time.
After the bride and groom cut the first piece of cake, my Banquet Captain, Barney, somehow became in charge of the man who cut cake. I'm telling you right now that if I was the bride and I saw how he massacred my cake, I would have freaked out. And even though part of it was his fault, some of the blame also needs to be assigned to the managers that didn't stop crazy brides from making ridiculous cakes. The Catering Manager would sit down with the bride and groom before the wedding and have a tasting. I was the server assigned to the tastings so I saw a lot of this unfold. For a cake tasting our Pastry Chef would make each person a platter of 4-5 cake samples and 4-5 frostings that they each could mix and match to decide on flavors. Though it wasn't offered, at some point brides started requesting fresh fruit in their cakes...it doesn't seem like a ridiculous request, but when you have a cake that has a lot of thin layers and you're trying to cut through chunks of fruit with a cake knife it tears your cake apart. Then the Banquet Manager or Catering Manager would freak out and yell at the Pasty Chef. Guess who's fault it wasn't? Yeah, the Pastry Chef. The Catering/Event team never said no to requests, so when it came to the practical application of table setting, placement, service, food, etc. there was always problems. And somehow they were always surprised...what do you mean we can't fit a 400 in a 200 person-capacity ballroom? Duh idiots.
One problem was serving large weddings plated dinners. Guests at the weddings saw a huge ballroom where dinner would be served. Us servers, in the back of the house, saw a huge kitchen that we had to carry hot-as plates with our bare hands (yeah, we didn't get gloves for the longest time) from one end to the other. The team was divided into usually 3 or 4 servers per section, depending on the size of the table being served. I was on the team that had to run to the opposite end of the kitchen and enter the ballroom through the doors furthest from the prep area. Yes I burned my hands, but what was even worse was that I remember spilling sauce off the plates all over my stomach because we were in such a rush with such hot plates. I felt so bad serving the dinner looking all junky. The other problem with large weddings was keeping the drunk guests under control. Usually weddings had open bars, which was nice for us servers because we got gratuity off of all the drinks served-- the more they drank, the more we made. Since it was at a hotel where wedding guests either had or could get a room, you didn't have to cut them off unless you knew they weren't staying or became belligerent. Somehow misfortune happened to me again and at one wedding I was serving the table with the guests who showed up drunk. As I was trying to serve these two men the salad course, they refused to acknowledge me so I had to remove the napkin and menu from their plate, lay the napkin across their lap, set the menu to the side, and serve them their salads. And if that sounds tricky, I had to do it while I was holding three salad plates. Needless to say I was annoyed. These two particular men were kicked out of the wedding right around the time the main course was served.
There were two things about weddings that I did like. First was the entertainment. We would have mini-dance parties in the back of the house when there was a good DJ. The drunk entertainment was also awesome. At one wedding the bridal party sang a Michael Bublé song and they were terrible! It was hilarious. The second good thing about weddings was the food. If the chefs made too much for a plated dinner (usually didn't happen) or if there was left over food from the buffets we got to chow down afterwards. And the cake...oh the cake! My favorite was the wedding that had the red velvet layered with cheesecake (like the Cheesecake Factory) and it was amazing. I got a stomachache because I ate so much --I didn't eat enough before I went to work and around 11 I was starving so I scarfed it down. And that particular wedding had lamb as the main course, which I don't like so I didn't eat any "real" food.
Weddings were always interesting, both good and bad interesting. The Royal Wedding was probably the most interesting I was involved with, and that is Chapter 6 ;)
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