Clever Joe.
You may very well see my partner there Walter but I have no such talent myself. He hesitated to trust me with a tiny portion of the garnish the other night... which went off without a hitch, btw.
If memory serves; I promised the bride we'd be no more than 45 minutes between serving the first and last persons of the group, because our kitchen is so limited... while believing it would take half of that. My best guess for how long it actually was would be 8 minutes... which, frankly, astounds me. My partner is incredible. Not only did he do what shouldn't be able to be done in a kitchen so small... it seemed to be a simple walk in the park. Further, neither I nor seemingly any of the guests could detect a let down from his normal, incredible, per order perfection. The oohs and ahhs were plentiful and clearly heart-felt, and it complimented perfectly the most unbelievably planned out event I've ever seen.
The party themselves (bride and mother of the groom, mostly, I suspect) planned everything to the most minute detail. They ironed and folded the napkins into
perfect fans in advance and placed their own votive candles and flower arrangements on every table. The seating chart had first and last names, salad and entree selections (color coded
), and matched the personalized menus in front of every guest. Wow. I've never seen a more beautiful dinning room. And I've never seen a couple go further out of their way to thank their friends and family for being there. It was so beautiful.
The groom's parents, who were stuck with the very sizable bill thought the standard 18% gratuity to little and insisted I increase it to 25% (they'll never know how huge of a favor that is for explaining why I tend to overstaff and the ramifications of doing so. :wink:).
Today I walked down to the church (having promised the bride I'd try... during presumably the biggest day of the year (stawberryfest) to hear the string band assembled there for the event). Holy crap!
I'm so ignorant of that kind of music that I hardly recognized the tunes (3 that I dared stay to hear), but I left glassy-eyed and amazed that anything could sound so beautiful. Wow.
As near as I can figure; the bride and now Mother-in-law dedicated the last year of their lives to making this wedding the wedding of the decade... and succeeded. I've seldom been so impressed by such extravagance and whole-heartedly respect the utter beauty they created in so many ways to make this event happen. I'm proud of the tiny role we played in what is seemingly weeks of related goings on.
Mostly, I'm relieved that things didn't go terribly wrong as I know only to well that they always can. The beautiful bride cried, as much as I had feared she might... but they were tears of happiness. My partner accomplished, again, more than I thought possible.
Strawberryfest is on again tomorrow, so I'd better get some sleep.
Watch for Chef Jeff to become famous. Every day people wig over his food, and the constant oohs and ahhs I get to hear are accomplished even as he seems to deligate more responsibility. Those who insist you should never go into business with your friends, haven't met mine.
