Alex Catering

11/08/09

Not sure I even got what I paid for

by Erin F at Citysearch

Alex Catering is affordable, though affordable is not always the best route to take when holding a special event. What we thought was going to be the highlight of our otherwise DIY wedding turned out to be the low-light, to say the least.

We scoured Yelp for a caterer who could meet our tight wedding budget and found Alex, who personally came to our house with an abundance of what seemed to be leftover, sample foods, perhaps from previous catering jobs or other house visits. Despite this slightly strange setup of having him come to us rather than the other way around, his cooking and willingness to work with us won us over.

The little contact we had with him in the seven months preceding our wedding was concentrated in the hectic days before, which made us realize that any communication we had with him - including our signed contract - were confusing if not null.

The contract was strangely adjusted by Alex in the days leading up to the wedding and on the actual day - an unnecessary cause for additional stress that people who plan their own weddings may know all too well, albeit in other, uncontrollable aspects of event planning and, hopefully, not from the people you pay to make things easier. Items on the contracted menu changed, despite the fact that we asked for any input on menu adjustments 30 days before with no response. On the day of the wedding, we were offered what, again, seemed to be leftover food as this particular dish was not as abundant as the rest. All the enthusiasm and creativity that we were promised seemed to have disappeared and we were left with what looked like a standard office party style spread. The food, if not altered from the descriptions in our contract, was lackluster at best. No leftovers were offered at the end of the night, as other Yelpers have mentioned, though we saw plenty of extra food in the back before cleanup.

Most peculiarly, our original contract's math was incorrectly added and somehow left out the wage of the third server. Unbeknownst to us, this third server was Alex himself and in the last hours of our wedding, he pushed us to pay him the additional wage. Despite the fact that it was his error in the signed contract and that, as we understand it, catering company owners don't "pay" themselves an additional wage; we wanted to get on with the evening and went ahead in tipping our budget (and good spirits) to meet his sudden requirement.

This "mishap" was already a nuisance to what was otherwise a wonderful evening, but it was even more infuriating since we only saw one server occasionally on the floor while a number of guests complained of having to clear their own tables; seeing the caterers eating and drinking our food in the kitchen while the buffet table on the floor was near empty; and circumventing the empty water pitchers on the tables for the venue's office-style water cooler by the bathroom.

After seven months of trying to avoid wedding clichés of being difficult and demanding clients, we really did not want to write this review. And in some ways, we feel like this company may have taken advantage of our naiveté. However, this is the only sore point in our day that we really wish we would have had the foresight to avoid. Maybe it was a bad day for the company, but that should not have reflected on what is supposed to be a wonderful celebration for us. For other DIY wedding planners or anyone planning a large event, proceed with caution.

• Pros: Affordable
• Cons: Broken contract; poor communication; poor presentation