This has been an incredibly exciting and satisfying year, culminating with a gorgeous wedding on August 11th. Both my wife, Lauren, and I have been married before, and when we decided that this was the partnership and marriage that we'd always wanted, we also found that we had similar views on what kind of a wedding we wanted: unique, filled with personal touch, and devoid of many of the usual wedding trappings.
After rejecting a number of wedding venues, we decided to have a small backyard wedding, as our house was the perfect space. The quickest and easiest decision we made was to hire a Los Angeles food truck to cater the dinner, as LA features a large variety of upscale, classy meals on wheels that don't come close to being described as "roach coaches".
Everything was set, and we stayed in contact throughout the year. Two weeks before the wedding, we paid our 50% deposit. In fact, to make life easier, I gave him 65%. A week prior to the event, we submitted our final headcount. A couple of days later, I apologized and said we had a change of two people - was it too late to change the headcount? No, that's fine, his wife Heather (who handles communication and scheduling) insisted. Two days before the wedding, I sent more emails, and said, "Can't wait to see you at 2 on Saturday!".
Fast-forward to Saturday at 2. The house is empty, Lauren is off doing wedding prep, and I'm rehearsing my vows. Timothy isn't there at 2. Or 2:30. The ceremony isn't until 6:30, and Timothy said two weeks earlier that he wanted to be there extra early, but I wasn't concerned. But at 3, I had a strange feeling. So I called Timothy.
"Hi, it's Dan. Are you going to be here soon?"
Silence.
"What are you talking about? Are you fucking with me?"
Now it's my turn to be silent.
"No, I'm not fucking with you. Are you fucking with ME?!"
Timothy freaks out, says that he goes off his Google Calendar and that he'll call me back. He doesn't for five minutes, as I start to sweat profusely. When I get him back on the phone, he says he is...
AT ANOTHER WEDDING
My heart absolutely stops. Timothy apologetically explains that he and Heather somehow, inadvertently DOUBLE-BOOKED WEDDINGS. He was in the middle of serving, and yes, I'm now fucked. I stay calm, and tell Timothy that I am holding it together, but I want him to know in no uncertain terms that he just fucked my wedding.
I hang up, and in perhaps the worst decision I made that day, I call Lauren, who's on her way home. "Lauren, you know how much I love you, and this is going to be the best weekend of our lives. But we've encountered the second obstacle of the weekend..." (our had been hit yesterday by an elderly gentleman the day before while parked at LAX!) .
"Timothy isn't coming. He double booked weddings".
Lauren took this news MUCH worse than she took the car accident news. In fact, she fucking freaks out. By the time she rolls in, she's hyperventilating and crying profusely, unable to stop.
But I'm on the horn, calling my amazing sister Kate, saying we need to find food... and a staff... in less than 3 hours for 75 people. For a wedding, no less.
Kate works nights as the manager of the Circle Bar in Santa Monica, so she knows waitstaff. She calls 3 people and gets us a bartender within the hour. We tag team calling every restaurant in a 10 mile radius. In a moment I'll never forget, Kate says, "Dan, I know this is a bad idea, but I know it's an option and they can get it done... CPK". From the other room, Lauren overhears this and shrieks between hyperventilating sobs, "I am NOT eating pizza at my fucking wedding!!!".
This is not going well.
Major panic is ensuing, as we are less than 2 hours from a ceremony, Lauren's hair is ruined and makeup unapplied... and we have no food. But Kate reaches Piknic in Playa Del Rely, and they calmly say they can handle the task. We work out a wedding menu on the fly, for a bill around $2K. After paying for the bartender, we may have saved $150 on not having the Flatiron Truck. Which, of course, isn't relevant to the issue.
Timothy's wife, Heather, finally reaches me. She claimed she had been calling over and over, but that's funny... I didn't have any messages on my phone. She's crying. She feels incredibly badly, which is understandable - I would expect that. She wants to help, but she hadn't solved our food problem for us. A real way to handle the situation would have been, "Sorry, Dan. We totally fucked up, but we're going to have food there in 2 hours for you." That didn't happen. I point out that we now have no waitstaff, and they've ruined that for us too, so she says she'll get people there for the event. I get off the phone with her, and start calling as many guests as I can, asking them to bring serving platters from their house.
Who has ever done that? Called your wedding guests 90 minutes before a ceremony, asking for DISHES?!? That's what I'm doing.
Lauren's now got it together, but is pacing and nervously cleaning (this is what she does when she's nervous, after all). I feel so badly for her - this vision that we worked so hard to achieve is now crumbling before our eyes. And even though a restaurant claims they're bringing food (hopefully around 7 PM), we have no idea if this is going to work, who is going to serve the food, and our nerves are completely, horribly frazzled.
Yeah, that's the kind of mental attitude you want to take into the biggest decision you'll ever make. Fortunately, we pulled it together for a ceremony that was filled with heart, emotion and sweetness.
Flash forward to dinner.
Heather had sent her mother and two family friends (I think) to help serve. This is thoughtful, of course, but the absolute least they could do. The three were well-meaning, and did the best they could, but things were ramshackle and a mess. There was no rhyme or reason, and food came out in random order. This isn't Heather's mom's & co's. fault, of course, but none of us should have been in this situation. My sister spent the entire night doing what she does best - arranging, managing, and controlling the situation. She wasn't enjoying the wedding, which makes me heartsick.
Amazingly, the food was really good. Piknic did a great job at the last minute, giving us pumpkin ravioli, chicken piccata and calamari. There were numerous snafus, of course, and we heard just this week that one whole table never got any food. But, for the most part, people had food, and we got through the night. The wedding was a blast, because ultimately, it's about the coming together of two ecstatically happy people coming together. It's not the food. It's this:
But a wedding is also a party. And the food is pretty damn important. Probably the most important thing.
And our caterer didn't show up.
If I wouldn't have called him - if he wouldn't have answered - we never would have KNOWN.
I woke up the next morning, angry. I should've been cuddling with my new wife, grinning ear to ear... but I was now pissed off again. I had a contract with the Flatiron Truck, and they didn't honor it. They didn't fix it - and sending family to help serve the food doesn't count as fixing it. Getting food there without us panicking for hours, and having MY OWN FAMILY help arrange and facilitate the meal, isn't fixing it.
I demanded that the Flatiron Truck make it right, and pay for the food we didn't want.
They were apologetic. They said they tried to help find us a meal (which they didn't nor did they pay for it). They insist they gave us back our deposit (of COURSE they would!) and bemoaned that this meant lost income for them. REALLY?!? Is that an argument?
They pointed out that people liked the food. That the food was cheaper. These points are NOT RELEVANT. We didn't plan for Italian, we didn't plan to be eating chips being randomly passed around from table to table. Kids were promised a kids' meal. We didn't plan for this horrible stress. The fact that I saved $150 doesn't mean anything to me.
They offered to cater a lunch for 30 people for us. Why on earth would we want that? Oh, should we discuss menus and time tables again?! No, I never want to see these people again.
Most people believed we should sue them. I even started an online poll on a wedding board, and more than 70% of respondents said that was the best approach. I was very tempted, but I didn't want to be dragged into a long, bitter fight when there weren't financial damages. The fact that they practically ruined our wedding, which was only saved by our whole family coming together to solve it, isn't easy to argue in court.
We decided what was only fair was to write them negative reviews online. After all, that's what places like Yelp are for - to determine if a service or business is deserving for patronage or hire. In my opinion, though the Flatiron Truck makes great food (that's why we hired them!), they are not worthy of our patronage, and other people should know that they were so careless as to DOUBLE-BOOK WEDDINGS. Here is my Flatiron Truck Yelp review (along with a positive review of the amazing Piknic, to whom we will always be grateful).
Would you want to risk your wedding hiring a business who could do that?
We wouldn't. But that's exactly what happened to us.
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