Fruit salad, yummy yummy...

...will not be on our menu (the fruit salad part...the menu is yummy yummy!).

After months of e-mails, too many phone calls, and negotiations, we booked our caterer. This vendor booking has been the most stressful, mostly due to the contract that eats up a huge chunk of our budget. I found our caterer through a post on Mission Impossible: Budget Wedding in LA. He had me at "drop our costs substantially," "crazy good," and "lack of service fees." Thank you, EBM, who I have been randomly stalking in this craziness that is the wedding blog world, just recently to realize that I actually met you prior at your double engagement party with two of our good friends. Now our friends will be lucky enough to enjoy the catering of Michael C. Events twice within a year.

Now Michael C.'s website is not at all my style and if I were to be the judge-a-book-by-it's-cover girl that I admit I sometimes can be, I would not look any further than the traditional-wedding-looking homepage. But, I'm glad I did. Michael C. is accommodating and professional. He is also super prompt with replies. Personally, I prefer e-mail, but he seems to like chatting on the phone. He drew up a menu and estimate quickly and I just as quickly rejected him because of my mistakes in my proposed food budget calculations.

I set our food budget too high.

Mistake #1: I thought "lack of service fees" was in reference to the services provided (chef, cooks, servers) so when I saw $xxx.xx in staff fees, I was like "Whaaaaaat?!"
I learned something new that day via dictionary.com:
service fee: n. An additional charge for a service for which there is already a basic fee.

Damn.

Don't get me wrong, I am thankful that Michael C. doesn't tack on service fees...but, still disappointed that staff fees are an added cost.

Mistake #2: rentals = expensive.

Damn again.

Lucky for us, Michael C. was able to work within our lowered budget and provided us with an estimate that we were much more willing to consider.

The tasting venue was quite a drive for us, way up in Santa Clarita, but as promised, worth the drive. Things that irked me: We didn't get to taste 2 of the 3 appetizers on our menu and he changed a couple of ingredients in some of the dishes without telling us and that mr. c called him on. However, he did throw in other options for us in the tasting that actually made us change our original menu. A couple of standout dishes:

Organic Broccoli Bisque - Creamy but light deliciousness. It reminded us of the Edamame Soup from The Open Door in Monterrey Park.

Wild Black Cod - Melt in your mouth yummy goodness.


New Zealand Baby Lamb Rack - Before the tasting, I was not a fan of lamb. Now it is on our menu.

Cannele de Bordeaux - Yumm.


Our final menu is even more yummy and even more amazing. My dilemma now is deciding which entree I want...lamb or black cod. I am drooling just thinking about it.