Home-Styled Weddings : THE POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

When Heather Augustine decided to cater her own wedding, it was a matter of dollars and cents.

The 27-year-old bride-to-be had trimmed her guest list to 500 and, allowing $20 per person (an estimated cost of a hotel reception for dinner and room rental only), she figured her expenses would be an amount usually reserved for a down payment on a home.

There was no one she could eliminate from the list. She would just have to hope everyone invited wouldn’t attend.

“What now?” she thought.

She had, on occasion, helped out as a waitress at a friend’s catering business. And, there were those lavish parties she used to give for friends and relatives on Christmas and the Fourth of July. But carrying around trays of hors d’oeuvres and Champagne or making nibbles to serve party-goers couldn’t compare to the massive wedding reception undertaking she had committed to on this occasion.

How did she finally manage to feed 1,000 hungry wedding reception guests? Well, she was, in fact, so successful that she started her own catering business, the Rolling Gourmet, which accommodates everything from intimate Champagne dinners for two to children’s parties in the park, to the Los Angeles Clippers and the Press Room for the Los Angeles Cobras of the Arena Football League (indoor professional football).

In talking about her own reception, she revealed a few of the problems in catering your own wedding, including: professional servers versus friends and relatives; the costs--having to pay retail prices for ingredients because food companies often refuse to sell wholesale to persons without a license; rental versus home equipment--trying to accommodate a large number of people with borrowed dishes; and taste versus time--making foods so far in advance to save time that they have a frost-bitten taste.

In addition, she offered the following suggestions for those who do want to prepare the food for their own wedding reception.

--Avoid hors d’oeuvres and finger sandwich foods because they are too tedious. Opt for bulky things that will satisfy.

--Always have a buffet with servers to control portions. Never have passed hors d’oeuvres, French service or a sit-down dinner--not with that many people.

--Servers can be friends or relatives but only if they are reliable. Professional servers are salaried so their job is to serve the portions you request. This is more economical because portion control saves money.

--Use professional bartenders when possible, especially with drunk driving laws. A friend or family member might let people overdo, but a professional remembers faces and how many drinks that person has had.

--Rent holloware, linens, tables and chairs, lights, canopy, dance floor, Champagne fountains for punch and bars. Many companies offer payment plans that make budgeting easy.

--Substitute good quality, heavy-duty plastic and pretty paper products for dinnerware, stemware and linens, if a budget doesn’t allow rentals.

--Have plenty of seats.

Question: Why did you cater your own wedding?

Answer: I decided it would be the most economically feasible thing to do to serve 1,000 people.

Q: Did you have any help?

A: I paid professional service providers: bartenders, servers, waiters and waitresses, but not as far as the food preparation was concerned, or purchasing and planning.

Q: Would you encourage others to cater their own weddings?

A: No. Most people don’t have a working relationship with produce companies, meat companies and fish companies that will allow them to go in and make these purchases without the proper licensing. It took us a year to establish those relationships. Most rental companies will work with anybody as far as planning. But most food companies won’t, so most people are forced to purchase retail. They (food companies) are in a fraternity with caterers so they discourage the public from making wholesale purchases and recommend caterers. It’s the same with photographers, bands, florists. They’re all in the same fraternity--party planning.

Secondly, most brides are really nervous and they need to concentrate on the details of the ceremony rather than the catering.

Q: Would you say that catering your own wedding was stressful?

A: Yes, definitely. I cried once a week and I lost friends because you depend upon people to do things for free. When you’re planning for your own wedding you’d like someone to stop by and pick up plates, roll the napkins, bake some bread in their ovens. You’d like people to let you borrow their barbecue pit to sear meat, borrow their serving pieces. Of course people say yes because they’re your friends, but they can’t be depended upon, their schedules don’t allow it.

Q: So whom did you depend upon?

A: My mother. The mother of the bride is responsible for the entire orchestration of the event. If she has to focus on the details of catering, it just adds to the stress of the day. So, I hired a coordinator who organized the wedding party, took care of the music, handled the church, ministers and ceremony, which left me time to cook.

Q: Isn’t either job equally stressful?

A: No. It’s cheaper and more practical (to hire a coordinator) and food doesn’t talk back.

Q: How did you select a menu? Do you make foods in advance and freeze them?

A: No matter what the function, two years afterward people continually talk about the food, so I could not afford to have people say the wedding was beautiful but the food tasted freezer-burnt.

Instead, I chose foods such as fresh fruit, which I cut one day ahead and refrigerated; shrimp, rice and pea salad, using quick rice, which needs only five minutes to prepare; Parkerhouse rolls, which we made two days in advance (we made about 2,500 rolls and stored them in plastic food storage bags); roast beef--I chose filet mignon because I saved so much money I could afford a more tender cut of meat, then I didn’t have to tenderize; whole hams, which we baked four days ahead of time and stored in friends’ and neighbors’ refrigerators. Tossed green salad was made that morning, along with the shrimp salad--my wedding was at 6 o’clock in the evening--but my mother and aunt were still making it while I was in the limousine on the way to the church.

I was so distracted by this that I forgot the groom’s ring and I had to send a neighbor back for it, which caused a slight delay in the ceremony.

Q: I guess this delay frustrated you?

A: Definitely. Because I hired professional servers and they were hired by the hour it was very important that the ceremony be on time. That tends to make you anxious during the ceremony because your mind is concerned about paying overtime, not on things like picture taking.

Q: So when you did arrive at the reception were there any difficulties?

A: Even though my sister was in charge of the cash, I was the only person who knew who actually was to get paid what, because I hired them. So I had to leave my guests and my husband long enough to pay the servers. Not to mention the fact that I had taken on so much responsibility that I didn’t even think to delegate the responsibility of going to the bank to get the cash to my sister, and I had to leave the house early in the morning to get it.

Q: So looking back, do you have any regrets about catering a party of this size?

A: Oh, yes. I would have hired someone, called them a year in advance, given them my menu and it would have been worth it to me to wait another year to save the money to hire the caterer. It was too much stress on myself, my mother, my entire family. Ever since my wedding, I haven’t entertained in my own home. Plus, I slept through my honeymoon. I was so exhausted . . . it took two weeks just to recuperate.

Q: Then why did you go into a business like this?

A: There’s a difference between getting paid to plan and cook and work at a function, and doing your own entertaining. Working for someone else is not the same thing as entertaining in your home. Your objectives are different.