This past Saturday (October 22) our family and Gavin's catered the reception meal for Jared and Danae Stump's wedding. It was a lot of fun, but wow! Were we ever wore out by the end!
We left around 8 am on Friday.
We arrived at the reception hall around 11:30 and got right to work! :)
Our first assignment was making these jello cup things.
You had to cream cream cheese and sugar...
Then make jello and chill it until it just started to set.
Making the jello...
We counted out 32 cups on each tray. :)
The Newswanger girls did an amazing job on the flowers!
We were only allowed to put one roaster per wall. They were scattered all over the kitchen and dining hall. :) Here, Dad had set some of them to testing the temperatures in the roasters to see how off they were. Unfortunately, after going through all of the roasters, we found out that the thermometer was bad and was giving readings that were way off. Mom actually had to go buy a new one. :)
They used stumpy decorations! :P
Jen worked on setting the bridal table. She did an awesome job!
(Note: I was corrected, Sharon Zook decorated the bridal table.) :)
Be careful, please!
After the jello chilled, we added the cream cheese to it. Dad didn't know until it was too late that you were supposed to slowly add the jello to the cream cheese. Oops. It was quite the fiasco trying to get the cream cheese lumps out of that dumb stuff. Now we know how to make it! (And I hope I never have to make it again!!!)
This was only about 2/3 of the jello.
Roses waiting to go onto the cake. Rachel and her girls made the wedding cake.
plating butter for the rolls...
Last job that day... filling the huge coffee percolators.
Early the next morning after a horrible nights sleep for most of us, we left the hotel around 6:30 or 7. Mom, Aunt Carol, Abi and I stopped at Casey's for a wake up coffee. :) Then we stopped by a grocery store to pick up a few items before heading over to the reception hall for "the big day."
Casey's breakfast pizza to start the day! We ate around 7:30 that morning and didn't get to eat again until 2:30 that afternoon. :-/
Because the reception hall was at a different location than the church, we couldn't see any of the wedding. Usually, you can slip out of the kitchen to at least watch the processional, the vows and the recessional (our favorite parts), but this time that was impossible. :(
They brought all the drinking water in from somewhere else. Dad gave me the job of supervising all of the beverages- water, punch and coffee. I filled up 20 pitchers of water to chill, then made punch in the empty water coolers.
Abi worked on the chicken marinade.
Busy kitchen!
Garlic Yukon gold mashed potatoes. Yum.
Sam was our dishwasher man. :)
Working on the punch.
Josh and Ben helped me :)
Ya gotta have fun in stressful situations. :)
Jen hadn't gotten around to putting most of the pictures up so she asked me to finish it. I was kinda nervous that I might not get them the way she wanted them, but I never heard yea or nay, so I'm assuming no news is good news. :P
(Note: Another correction. Sheila Zook actually did the picture table.)
KK posed for a "Yeti" picture. (That's what Uncle Mike calls pictures of people who were caught in motion.) :)
All the servers arrived around 8 to receive their instructions. There were 16 sets of servers, 36 in all (that doesn't include bridal table servers). Aunt Carol is covering all the rolls.
Pre cutting the pies...
I don't know as I appreciate being put at an unlucky table. But, I guess somebody had to be placed there, why not the Cinderellas? :b
They had these neat pie carriers.
Thank-you gifts
Centerpiece
We had to place the two percolates way out in the dining hall.
16 trays with eight mugs on each
Jen also asked me to put the roses onto the cake.
The "calm" before the storm. :)
Once the servers arrived, organized chaos reigned. They had to fill all the waters and punch glasses, then unwrap all the rolls. Since we only had 20 pitchers and 36 servers, um, ya, it was crazy. Then when they finished the water, we had to quickly fill the pitchers with ice and punch. After the guests arrived, we were kept hopping filling and refilling those 20 pitchers with water and punch. It was crazy!
Panic! They're here!
We peeked out from under the kitchen curtain as we waited to start serving the food.
All of us work together super well as a team. :)
The bridal table servers brought in the plates to be filled in the kitchen... And after that, mayhem. They wanted a "family style" meal, which means making up enough dishes of each dish to go out to each table. Ugh. We had an assembly line going, Dad and several others dished the food, passed it to Abi and Ben who buttered the peas and sauced the chicken, then Anthony and I passed the dishes to Aunt Carol and Mom, who passed them to the servers. We had to make sure that each server set got all three dishes, peas, mashed potatoes and chicken. Once we got into a system, it was super fun, but it was pretty hectic there for awhile. I wish we'd gotten some pictures or a video of it, but we were too busy.
This was all that was left over besides like two pitchers of punch and several untouched jello cups. That was a close shave!
The happy couple :)
This was Daddy's folder. He wrote each of our jobs on a sticky note so that he could keep it all straight and so that we could find out what to do without asking him.
Thankfully, they assigned someone else to clean up for us. If they hadn't, well, we would've been completely wiped out. We were wiped out as it was already. When our job was done, we all looked like we were walking in our sleep. :D
We drove home that afternoon.
All in all, it was a great weekend! We got to spend time with family and cousins, see friends that we hadn't seen for awhile, and have fun!
