Catering and an Apology

Hi folks! I know, it's been a while since I've updated the blog. Thankfully we have got plenty of time to plan out our wedding. Unfortunately for you guys that means less blog posts now. I'm sure things will pick up as we get closer to THE date. Now for the real post....

We sent in our deposit for our venue (Black Mountain Sanctuary, see previous post for more info.) at the end of October. Even with the deposit paid we still needed to select a caterer before we could sign our venue contract. BMS allows an abundance of personalization options for your special event. One of those options is to add-on a full kitchen. This means that the caterer would have access to the stove/oven, dishwasher, refrigerator, etc. Before we could say yes or no to this add-on, we needed to choose a caterer and ask them.

As November began to turn into December we started to get a little anxious about selecting a caterer. In order to lock in our prices, we had to pick someone soon. Lance was away on business for a majority of October and November. It really fell on me to get the ball rolling. I started looking at all of the various caterers in the area and made a master list. We went through it and selected our top five. I contacted all of them within the next week. Most of them didn't answer their phones, so I left messages. Two caterers called me back and I scheduled appointments.

If you're still following me, I mentioned that I was doing all this at the beginning of December. Can you guess what one of the busiest times of the year is for caterers? That's right, December (you know-- holiday parties and all that). Luckily the two caterers we were in touch with were able to meet with us. Our first appointment was with Saffron Fine Foods (SFF).

SFF is a wonderful local catering company affiliated with HomeGrown, a local restaurant in town. They specialize in local, sustainable AMAZING food. If I had to describe their "food philosophy" I would say that it is Southern comfort food with a twist. When we met with SFF, they were exceptionally receptive to our budget and our desires to keep our wedding as environmentally friendly as possible. Some of the awesome things that were discussed:
1) All left-over food that is still able to be eaten is donated to various local shelters/food banks.
2) All food that is disposed of will be composted by them at no additional cost.
3) They will help us with securing compostable (but pretty!) dishware.

We had a great meeting and felt really good about our chances of finding a caterer.

A few days later we had lunch at HomeGrown (since SFF and HomeGrown are owned/operated by the same group they use the same facilities and food philosophies). Oh My Goodness! The food was DELICIOUS! Some of our favorites included:
1) Mac 'n' Cheese bites-- Similar to mozzerella sticks but with homemade mac cheese inside with fresh marinara sauce.
2) Jalapeno cole slaw-- I'm not a slaw girl but this stuff was awesome. There was just enough spice to give the slaw a nice smokey quality to it.
3) Buttermilk fried chicken-- Lance and I agree that it was the best fried chicken we had ever tasted. The outside was exactly what you want from a fried food without being too greasy and the inside was super moist.

After that lunch we had decided that, if it's possible, we want SFF to cater our wedding. SFF said they would be sending us some menu options but it might take a while due to the holidays. We are really looking forward to working with this wonderful group of people.

After discussing the add-on option for our venue contract with SFF we decided that it wasn't necessary. We were able to sign and send in our contract.

On Thursday we are heading down to Raleigh for the holidays. I'm also going wedding dress shopping with my mother and Katy (and possibly Katy's mother who is like my adopted-mom) on Thursday. I'm hoping that we can have as much success with the dress as we did with the caterer!