I started looking into this properly after a couple I know got married in September of last year. They had planned for a coastal ceremony in late autumn, expecting the usual seasonal rains but not a typhoon that parked itself over the peninsula for three days. Their venue lost power entirely, the access road flooded…
I’ve spent enough years covering weddings to know that the corkage fee conversation is where most couples lose their footing before they’ve even started. The venue hands you a contract with a number — $35, $45, sometimes $60 per bottle — and the assumption is that this is simply the price of doing business. It…
The decision came about three months before the wedding, during a tasting session at a bakery in Brooklyn where I sat staring at a three-tier sample that cost more than my first car. The woman behind the counter, a pastry chef named Aiko, watched me hesitate and said something I haven’t forgotten. “You know,” she…
I was standing in a catering tent outside Portland, Oregon, in mid-July, watching a bride and groom finish their first dance to a slow, aching cover of “At Last.” The song hit its final note, the guests clapped, and then the servers appeared with trays of miniature tacos seasoned with chipotle and lime. The timing…
I was standing in a rented commercial kitchen in Queens three days before the wedding, staring at a 40-quart stockpot that still had the price tag on its handle, and it occurred to me that I had no idea what I’d gotten myself into. The bride, Mei Ling, was on the phone with her aunt…