So, as I may or may not have mentioned before, Andrew recently graduated from culinary school. The French kind where he made rabbit and learned to cook different sauces and is now the go-to source for everyone we know anytime they have any question at all about any food. Needless to say, we like to eat! One of the (many) ways he "takes care" of me is by making me dinner every night, and he likes to challenge himself to make something good, not merely just put something on the table. He is very picky about restaurants we go to and what recipes he is even willing to try for dinner. He takes food very seriously.
(Not Andrew. But you get the idea. [
source])
It makes sense that his
one requirement for our wedding from the day we got engaged was that he got to pick the food. I gave in because I knew he would do a great job. This really was his element.
The first place we fell in love with was
Pappa's Catering. Pappa's has a ton of restaurants in Houston (and other areas too) in different types of cuisine (Mexican, steaks, Greek, Cajun, seafood, etc.) and while it isn't the best meal you've ever had, their food is consistently good and affordable. We put that on the back burner until we booked our venue.
Our venue, oh our venue. That is a story for another post. Our venue has a list of five preferred caterers. There is no on-site kitchen. If you don't want one of the preferred caterers, there is a $500 fee. We definitely did not want to tack anything onto our wedding budget unnecessarily, so we decided to stick to their list. Can you see where this is going?
Of COURSE Pappa's wasn't on the list. So, we had to focus on what was.
One option was wayyyy too far out of our price range. That left us with four choices. We went to an open house for one and were less than impressed (There was a mashed potato bar with a large martini glass of cheese. I asked for some tongs or for the gloved woman working the station to put my cheese on for me. She looked at me like I was crazy, so I am guessing countless others put their germy hands in that glass before me. ICK! Needless to say, I had my potatoes plain.). One caterer runs a restaurant in Sugar Land that we visited with Andrew's dad and sister and we all four hated our meals! And then there were two...
Both of the other caterers were highly recommended by our day-of coordinator. We went to meet with one, and she could work in our budget. She insisted to me that two bites of appetizer were more than enough for our guests (I disagreed, because I like to eat!) and gave us a quote that included two passed appetizers and a buffet meal with chicken. I was okay with the menu, but not super excited about it. The quote for silverware and napkin rental also seemed really high. Before we booked, we decided to talk to our last option.
We met with Courtney of
Campbell's Catering. Instead of presenting us with a premade menu, she asked us what we envisioned. When I told her we wanted a seated dinner but had decided to settle on a buffet, she stopped me and told me to tell her what I wanted. She would let me know if I couldn't have it. We wanted our guests to have a choice of proteins, larger appetizers, a seated meal, and sides closer to our favorite foods. Whereas the other venue quoted us as having a rice pilaf as our starch, Courtney listened when we told her we love rosemary new potatoes and added that to our menu immediately. We told her the things that Andrew likes to cook, and we looked over her extenzive menus and created our own. It helped us make yet another aspect of our wedding truly unique. At the end of the meeting, she said she would send us a quote for a basic Italian buffet, our menu served buffet style, and our menu served seated. She promised that the price difference for seated vs. buffet was negligible.
We got the quotes a few days later, and, um, let's say we disagree on the meaning of "negligible." However, her buffet prices were drastically cheaper than option #1 and her seated price wasn't much higher than it was. This was the time to spend the money to give the groom what he wanted. He has gone along with all of my indecision, lazy DIY, and money spent on other things, so it was worth it to give him the one thing he's wanted from the beginning. No buffet for us!
What decision have you made for your groom? Did shopping around save you some cash?
