BotH: Chapter 6

Chapter 6
The Royal Wedding

This was one of the weddings that I was most involved with. The bride, Ms. Princess, was a very rich lady. Her father is an owner of a nationwide restaurant/bar chain and they have tons of money. Her parents are divorced, which made for an awkward menu tasting. The wife and daughter have both had lots of work done, and I was surprised to see that the mother looked like she just came from gardening--not done up, no make up, sloppy clothes, etc. Ms. Princess on the other hand came looking like a super model. She had the snottiest attitude and most spoiled demeanor of anyone that I ever came across while working there.  Her fiance Mr. Prince was a little pretentious, but you could tell by the way he acted that she was in charge of that relationship. Everyone at a tasting got a complimentary beverage and I remember him asking for something that wasn't initially offered to him and at the time I had no idea what he was talking about. I think he ordered prosecco or something like that and I tried to mumble back to our bartender what he ordered (I'm an alcohol idiot, but more on that later).
For the tasting our Banquet Chef, Tony, actually did it in the restaurant (which was not common) so I had to stand "guard" outside the doors of the chef's private table and act as the liaison between the guests and chef. I remember listening in to what they thought of the food, and for the salad course she seemed mostly pleased and swapped some toppings, but other than that there were no complaints. The main course tasting was where it all went downhill. I brought them in their halibut and steak and this is what I heard. "I've had a lot of halibut in my life and this is literally the worst halibut I have ever had. Like, it's disgusting and it's the worst ever." I could tell that the Catering Manager was speechless because she wasn't sure how to react to the criticism and after the tasting she asked me to get Tony. Since Tony and I were friends I gave him the heads up that she hated the fish (he was furious) before he went in to meet with them. Without being rude while talking to them, he became slightly defensive (a New Yorker defensive? No...) in trying to understand what exactly was wrong with the halibut. I don't remember what she said was wrong with it, but they ended up figuring out a solution. Once we were in the back of the house Tony went off. Realistically whatever her complaint was was something bizarre, I remember thinking it was petty. She was the only one at the table that complained about the fish.
Then there was the wedding cake fiasco. She came in with a drawing she did herself of what she wanted her cake to look like. She was not an artist and gave very vague ideas about what she wanted it to look like. Our poor pastry chef was left with a scribbling to go off of for her enormous cake. Ms. Princess wanted her cake to look like Italian Stucco so Orin did the best job he could. Phil, our Executive Chef (he was in charge of all the chefs and dining in The Resort), showed up just before the wedding to the Pastry Kitchen, saw the cake, criticized Orin, and decided to re-decorate it himself. As nice as Phil was (at least to me), he was no pastry chef and he went to town on that cake to "fix" it, just to make it worse. The weird thing about all of this is that I didn't serve the wedding. I was annoyed to miss it, but I injured myself that week at another event and per doctor's orders I had to sit-out banquets for a while.