Wedding Disasters: Food

I’ve heard many a bitch complain about her wedding over the years.  I’ve had to endure several lunches where I was forced to hear the babblings of some mother-daughter standoff involving the color of flowers, the number of guests, or the type of cake, and all I could ever think was, “um…most people don’t have jobs so this isn’t striking me as an emergency.”  Now you can’t say something like that to a bride without being murdered.  But I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my wedding would be different.

I had categorized my wedding into three important parts: Food, Dress, Venue.  I hurried along to make sure all of these categories where underway and organized.  I don’t want to blow anyone’s mind or anything, but it was a fairly simple process. 

Food.  That seemed like the place to start.  Wedding food is garbage and I wanted mine to be edible.  I don’t know a lot about appropriate wedding cuisine, but I do know a lot about cheeseburgers, so my first order of business was to rent an Umami Burger truck, because trucks are cool and burgers are delicious.  Fuck this shit, weddings are eeeeaaaassssy.

I felt vindicated.  Weddings are stupid.  I knew it!  After hearing bride after bride complain about wedding minutia and thinking, “God, this just does not sound hard.  What are these shrews so stressed about?” I could finally revel in the fact that I had done the “impossible wedding planning” and, shockingly, IT WASN’T THAT HARD!  I was elated.  And just as I was patting myself on the back, Umami Burger called.

Those.  Mother.  Fuckers. 

Umami Burger: Hello Alison?

Me: Yep.

UB: Hey!  It’s your pals over at Umami Burger!  Bad news, hun.  We actually decided to disband our food trucks effective immediately.  You’ll see the credit to your account within 48 hours.  Good luck with your wedding though!  I’m sure it’ll be great.

Me: *silent sobbing*

UB: Alison?

Me: *loud sobbing*

UB: Are you ok?

Me: YOU. RUINED. MY. WEDDING!

Seriously, I said that.  I cried and told a burger place that they had ruined my wedding.  I was bereft.  I didn’t give a fuck who had jobs or not, or who was being physically tormented by their captor, or who was facing an unwanted pregnancy.  This felt like a motherfucking emergency. 

I tried to keep myself together.  Sure, I didn’t have a burger truck, but I still had a bunch of catered food for the rehearsal dinner, wedding appetizers and brunch the next day.  My parents were just about to roll into town for a tasting, so I tried to focus on the food I actually had.  The tasting was a huge success!  At least I had that going for me.  We finalized the menu and I emailed the caterer.  I received the following message:

“After 60 years in business, Powell’s has decided to close its doors.  As of yesterday, I have opted to retire.  Thank you all for your support over the years and we wish you the best of luck on your future endeavors.”

I figured this was a joke.  I had just talked to this guy the day before to set up the tasting.  And over the last several weeks, I had established what I believed to be a pretty tight relationship with Mr. Powell so I felt confident that he wouldn’t let me down.  I would sort this all out with him and everything would be fine.

Mr. P: Hello?

Me: Mr. Powell!  Hey, I just emailed you our final order and I got the weirdest message.

Mr. P: Yea, I retired.  After I get off the phone with you, I’m going to disconnect this line.

Me: M’kkk it’s just that you literally delivered a bunch of food to us today and we liked it.

Mr. P: Great.  Have a good day!

Me: No wait!  I was just wondering, do you intend to follow through with your existing orders?

Mr. P: I’d like to but I’m retired now.

Me: Right, but you weren’t yesterday.  I just don’t understand how this happened so quickly.

Mr. P: Business, am I right?

Me: That doesn’t even make sense.

Mr. P: Ok great.  Have a good day!

Me: WAIT!  MY PARENTS FLEW HERE TO HELP ME WITH MY WEDDING.  THE ONLY THING I HAVE TO SHOW FOR MYSELF IS YOUR STUPID FOOD.  THEY FINALLY LIKED SOMETHING AND I DEMAND THAT YOU GIVE IT TO ME!!!

Mr. P: Listen, here’s what I can do for you.  Why don’t I email you all the things that you ordered and then you can have a guideline for what you want to pick.

Me: Oh.  Ok.  So you’ll still do the catering for my wedding.

Mr. P: What?  No.  I’m retired.

Me: WHY THE FUCK WOULD I NEED TO KNOW WHAT I ORDERED THEN, YOU FUCKING LUNATIC?!  YOU RUINED MY WEDDING!

I can’t.  I want to even but I literally can’t.  At this point, I had no food for my wedding.  One of my friends pointed out that he had ALS and couldn’t drive or work and I wondered why he was making this about him.  COOL STORY RONNIE, BUT I DON’T HAVE ANY FOOD FOR MY WEDDING!

I started calling everyone I knew and letting them know how hard my life was.  They all said they would pray for me.  #blessed 

I was finally able to find yet another burger truck.  This one was called Farmer's Belly.  Based on the name, I was concerned that their food wouldn’t have enough fat and calories but desperate times called for desperate measures.  I organized a tasting and started to get excited about the food again.  They were going to bring three different types of burgers and three different types of fries.  I even ordered a vegetarian option because I care deeply about other people.  One of their fry choices was pesto fries and that excited me to no end.  Things were looking up!

On the day of my wedding, I was elated.  I was so happy to be with all my friends and family and was feeling triumphant since I had pulled it all together.  People are so nice to you if you have your makeup professionally done and put on a white dress so I wasn’t that surprised when my friend, Richie, asked if I’d like something to eat.  “Yes!  Would you please get me some pesto fries?!”  Everything was going wonderfully.  I continued to greet my guests and mingle, and then Richie returned with some piece-of-shit french fries that I was horrified to see in my presence.

Me: What are these?

Richie: French fries

Me: Where are the pesto fries?

Richie: Oh, they don’t have any.

Holy shit those motherfuckers screwed me.  I’m not stupid, so I had made binders which included all of my email correspondence with each vendor as well as all of my final orders and receipts.  I walked away from all the guests, raced into the dressing room, grabbed my binder and went storming out to the burger truck with fire in my eyes.

Luckily I was waylaid by my maid-of-honor, Jenny.

Jenny: Alison?

Me: Yes?

Jenny: What are you doing?

Me: They didn’t bring pesto fries.

Jenny: Alison, ya know what no one wants to see?

Me: Regular fries.

Jenny: Noooooo, an angry bride running with a binder over her head.

Me: Oh.

Jenny: I will take care of it.  People are having fun.  No one cares about the food anyway.

Me: Take it back.

Jenny: Don’t you have other things to worry about?  You’re married now!  How does it feel?!

Me: Empty and void of pesto.

Jenny: You’re awful.

Jenny eventually climbed onto the burger truck to see what the fuck the problem was.  Turns out that even after a tasting and a specifically placed order, Farmer's Belly just decided to bring whatever the fuck they wanted.  I emailed them a few days later and pointed out that they hadn’t brought any of the right food.  They basically told me how lucky I was to have food in the first place and honestly, after what I had been through, they weren’t wrong.  I asked for as much money back as they could give me and then opted to never eat from anywhere that was associated with a farmer ever again.  That has proven to be difficult….obviously. 

Weddings are terrible.  If I wanted to have a dick shoved up my ass by every stranger I encountered, I would have stayed single.  And this was just the food element of the God damn forsaken wedding festivities.  Dress and venue were equally horrible.  Ugh…the dress.  What a nightmare that turned out to be.