[Sca-cooks] Catering - input needed

[Susan Fox-Davis]

You have not mentioned if it is a "medieval" themed wedding feast. 
 Well, the following advice will probably apply either way.

Milord hubby and I, experienced SCA chefs for 200+ person feasts, made 
that jump about 2 years ago.  It went just fine!  The good news is, you 
are not bound by a lot of SCA strictures and cheapass barons, just the 
family.  

Make friends with whomever is in charge and you will be in good stead. 
 In our case it was The Bride, in many families that would be the 
bride's Mother.

You are not expected to include the Wedding Cake with the meal budget. 
 I did because that was my personal wedding gift to them and I had some 
cake experience. [Photos here: 
 http://home.earthlink.net/~selene/kitchen/id5.html]

Get to know the site and its equipment.  Rent anything you think you 
will need that's not there or not working.  Keep communications open 
with the site owners as to what is working.  You don't want to walk in 
that morning and find out you don't have the oven anymore. [You can 
guess why I bring that up.  Oy.]

You can rent the serving and dining dishes as well.  This came as a 
fabulous surprise to us and made life much easier.

Engage twice as many kitchen and serving assistants as you expect to 
need.  Half of them will flake out, each one thinking, well it's only 
me, everyone else will be there, it won't matter...HA!

More when and if I think of more.
Selene Colfox


patrick.levesque at elf.mcgill.ca wrote:

>A couple of friends have recently asked me to cater to their wedding feast,
>which is tentatively planned sometime next summer. They want to invite around
>100 guests.
>
>Now I've cooked for larger events than that, but never professionally. I haven't
>answered their request yet, as I'm not sure if I want to handle this. There is a
>difference in my mind between amateur, volunteer feast-making and professional
>catering.
>
>So I'd like to ask of other folks on this list (some of whom I already know to
>be distinguished professionals), have any of you already made the jump between
>the two? How did it go? Any advice? etc...
>
>Thanks!
>
>Petru
>