Dear Teri,
I am contemplating catering my daughters wedding myself. I know it's a big task and am prepared to hire the staff needed and rent all the equipment needed to pull off the affair. It will be outdoors and in June of 2009. My husband, my daughters fiance, and of course many others are big on steaks on the grill. I'm leaning toward Prime Rib but I'm not sure if it would be equally easy to have a roast and someone carving it? Or have someone grilling the steaks on a large grill at a grill station. I suppose a roast sliced and placed in chafing dishes is the easiest route to go? But I think the presentation of a grilling station would be better.If for a grilling station, would it be best to just get Prime Rib steaks? Or roast a prime rib, slice then put on grill?I'm trying to come up with a menu now for a lot of pre-made and frozen stuff that just has to be heated. Another question I have is about 'warming' or 'proofing' ovens. What is the process of preparing all the heated foods without having to have 10 ovens? This is confusing me on how this is done. Is stuff heated then placed in those tall warming ovens to stay heated? Heated then placed in chafing dishes for the duration? Again, I'm prepared to rent the ovens needed but don't know if one large commercial oven and a proofing oven would be good or if I would have to rent more?Sorry for all the confusion but this isn't my area of expertise, and again, I'm just contemplating this for now. I may have to hire the caterer but the one we wanted is not available for our date so I thought I'd look into doing it ourselves. Again, with hiring out the professional help needed.Thanks in advance for any help!
Alisa,
Don't do this--there's NO WAY you can do a dinner like this for 250 people without the massive amounts of kitchen equipment that a professional caterer has. I'm a wedding planner by trade and if I were planning this wedding and you told me you were going to cater this with home equipment and some rentals, I would not participate in it because this is going to be a disaster--even if you were a professional caterer you cannot pull this off without the equipment in a professional kitchen. Even a restaurant could not put out 250 steaks at the same time if everyone came in at the same time. Here's one example of what I mean: To cook a steak to medium you need 9 minutes or so on each side for a 1" thick steak. That's 18 minutes. You can fit 10 (maybe 12) steaks on a grill, so you will need to be constantly cooking and you will turn out a dozen steaks every 20 minutes. This means it will take about 3-4 HOURS to grill everyone's steaks and I know you don't cook because no one who cooks would EVER contemplate cooking a prime rib and then grilling it! LOL Sweetie, I know weddings are expensive--I save my brides a ton of money because EVERYONE rapes brides and weddings--here's a hint when you are shopping for something for the wedding, say 'FAMILY REUNION' not "wedding", that alone will save you 20%. Get your guest list trimmed down to where you can afford the caterer without mortgaging the house or do whatever you need to do but PLEASE don't try to do a wedding of this magnitude with rented equipment--you don't even know the correct use of a proofing oven!! It's to make bread rise--it doesn't get above 110 degrees which is not hot enough to hold food safely.If you need more help, let me know, I'll do my best. Trust me on this!
I am contemplating catering my daughters wedding myself. I know it's a big task and am prepared to hire the staff needed and rent all the equipment needed to pull off the affair. It will be outdoors and in June of 2009. My husband, my daughters fiance, and of course many others are big on steaks on the grill. I'm leaning toward Prime Rib but I'm not sure if it would be equally easy to have a roast and someone carving it? Or have someone grilling the steaks on a large grill at a grill station. I suppose a roast sliced and placed in chafing dishes is the easiest route to go? But I think the presentation of a grilling station would be better.If for a grilling station, would it be best to just get Prime Rib steaks? Or roast a prime rib, slice then put on grill?I'm trying to come up with a menu now for a lot of pre-made and frozen stuff that just has to be heated. Another question I have is about 'warming' or 'proofing' ovens. What is the process of preparing all the heated foods without having to have 10 ovens? This is confusing me on how this is done. Is stuff heated then placed in those tall warming ovens to stay heated? Heated then placed in chafing dishes for the duration? Again, I'm prepared to rent the ovens needed but don't know if one large commercial oven and a proofing oven would be good or if I would have to rent more?Sorry for all the confusion but this isn't my area of expertise, and again, I'm just contemplating this for now. I may have to hire the caterer but the one we wanted is not available for our date so I thought I'd look into doing it ourselves. Again, with hiring out the professional help needed.Thanks in advance for any help!
Alisa,
Don't do this--there's NO WAY you can do a dinner like this for 250 people without the massive amounts of kitchen equipment that a professional caterer has. I'm a wedding planner by trade and if I were planning this wedding and you told me you were going to cater this with home equipment and some rentals, I would not participate in it because this is going to be a disaster--even if you were a professional caterer you cannot pull this off without the equipment in a professional kitchen. Even a restaurant could not put out 250 steaks at the same time if everyone came in at the same time. Here's one example of what I mean: To cook a steak to medium you need 9 minutes or so on each side for a 1" thick steak. That's 18 minutes. You can fit 10 (maybe 12) steaks on a grill, so you will need to be constantly cooking and you will turn out a dozen steaks every 20 minutes. This means it will take about 3-4 HOURS to grill everyone's steaks and I know you don't cook because no one who cooks would EVER contemplate cooking a prime rib and then grilling it! LOL Sweetie, I know weddings are expensive--I save my brides a ton of money because EVERYONE rapes brides and weddings--here's a hint when you are shopping for something for the wedding, say 'FAMILY REUNION' not "wedding", that alone will save you 20%. Get your guest list trimmed down to where you can afford the caterer without mortgaging the house or do whatever you need to do but PLEASE don't try to do a wedding of this magnitude with rented equipment--you don't even know the correct use of a proofing oven!! It's to make bread rise--it doesn't get above 110 degrees which is not hot enough to hold food safely.If you need more help, let me know, I'll do my best. Trust me on this!
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------QUESTION: I so appreciate the honesty, and realize how foolish I must have sounded. LOL I should hope I at least gave you a laugh for the day :). I realize it may sound like I'm trying to save a ton of money by doing this myself on a backyard Weber, but other than maybe thinking I was going to save a few bucks, it really is a matter of wanting to have exactly what we want. The grill I was thinking of are those huge 60" (I think that was the size) rental grills, or I know you can rent those massive things that pull behind cars. I was thinking of a few of those large one's, or however many I would need. And a chef for them.As for the oven equipment things, there is a place here to rent the large commercial Viking ovens, Cambro units, etc.My daughter was going to have a destination wedding which I was so looking forward to, and just changed her mind recently and decided on June of 2009 (6 months earlier than planned) and decided to have it on a family farm. We have to literally bring in everything as it is. Tents, tables, chairs, bathrooms, etc. I wouldn't attempt anything like this in the kitchen at the house, I was thinking along the lines of setting up the garage like a literal commercial kitchen with rental stuff. As I said, the Viking stoves, etc. Of course now I at least know a proofing oven will do me no good, as I don't plan on making my own bread. LOL I've seen warming ovens, I'm assuming those would be what I meant? LOL As for freezer, refrigeration, there already is a commercial size there, so that wouldn't be a problem at all.I am only contemplating this and was trying to determine what I would exactly need and the process of warming food and holding it, etc. And I certainly wouldn't take this on myself, I am pricing up the 'people' rental I would need also. There is a staff service I could get a chef, cooks, servers, and any other help. But again, I don't know the process of cooking for this many people so I don't know if I would have to rent 10 ovens or what?I guess the only reason I really started thinking of doing it ourselves is mainly because the caterer we wanted isn't available at this late date, and I thought we're going to have meat, who doesn't love steaks on the grill? But I want decent food to go along with it and not someone like Bobby's Backyard BBQ with slaw and beans. Okay, that is a made up name but I think you know what I mean. The caterer we want did my oldest daughters wedding 2 years ago. And she's as disappointed as I am that they can't do this one. And I know what you mean about everyone raping brides and weddings, that affair set me back $50,000 + But it was beautiful and I don't regret one penny spent.And you are right, I'm not a cook. I was reading up on Prime Rib roasts and they were talking about cutting them and I figured they cut them steak size then put them on the grill for 'grill' effect. I've been reading so much my mind is mush!!!The guest list 'is' trimmed down believe it or not. I've called a few more caterers and have a few appointments. One caterer is one we looked at for my oldest daughters wedding but I remember their food didn't impress me at all. It just felt like 'normal' blah food. We might just have to 'settle' for less than what we want if I can't get this figured out. Any chance you'd want to fly to Maryland and take care of all of it for me? LOLI do so appreciate your help. Thanks so much!
Answer:
If the save the date cards haven't gone out, you might want to change the date to one your original caterer can do, which would be your very BEST option in my opinion. I can come to Maryland and help you if you need me to, and believe me when I tell you that I will get a lot done for you, even in a weekend!If your daughter is just interested in good food, there are a lot of places that will do some really good food and not charge a fortune, the one that comes immediately to mind is Boston Market--they did a wedding for me and everyone raved about how good the food was--and they did it on 2 weeks notice because the original caterer ran off with the bride's deposit!! (This was not one I did from start to finish--they called me in desperation because they lost 12K when the caterer THEY chose on their own ran out with their money and now they needed a wedding and had 12K LESS to spend!!) I pulled it together for them on what they could afford and everyone had a great time--and this bride sends me more referrals than you can believe!!Why don't you call me or email me directly and I'll see what I can do to help you? Take a look at my website and see if there's anything I can do for you. www.weddingwire.com/teridavisnewman I know it's tough when kids change plans on the last minute--I meet a lot of parents who are ready to kill their daughters!!
Happy Holidays!
Teri
