When Katr was in town a couple of weeks ago, we scoped out a few possible venues for our Gay Wedding Cabaret & Topiary Festival. Because - and I'm not sure if you know this - just because you've picked a DATE and told everybody doesn't mean that the wedding is totally planned.
One venue we looked at was the Steamwhistle Brewery, where they gave us a free six pack, so obviously that scored a lot of points. We also looked at the Great Hall on Queen, where I performed the coveted role of "witness" at my friend Rela's wedding a few years ago. There are many things to recommend the Great Hall, not the least of which being that they let you bring in your own hooch. Also, there's a disco ball. Also, it looks like this from the outside:
and if we can't LIVE in a big Victorian mansion with a turret, we can damn well get married in one! Also, there's a stage. 'Cause we're not kidding about the cabaret.
We liked the Great Hall and our date was available but we needed to know a little more about the preferred caterers (i.e. is their food good, will they give us attitude for not wanting a sit-down dinner, will they get really confused about who's the "groom" at the lesbian wedding just because one of us might wear pants, etc.). Lucky for us, there was an open house at the Great Hall Wednesday night to show off the space and introduce the various caterers and other service providers to event planners and brides and mothers of brides and the occasional groom. Free booze! Free snax! Free wedding magazine! Jealous? Since Katr's back in Vancouver, I brought my man of honour, Padu. Ah, sweet Padu. Best man of honour ever.
While I was waiting for Padu across the street from the Hall, I accidentally made a movie.
We floated up the tulle-draped staircase into the main room to find the open house in full swing. Four caterers, a flower shop, some valet parking people, a DJ and a videographer were there and the centre of the room was dominated by three vastly different table settings. Ice clinked in glasses - beef tenderloin sizzled - cheque books trembled. Padu and I began our rounds. Here are our notes:
Flower Lady - seemed a little shell-shocked. Too many poppies, perhaps? Those crazy flower people. But she did seem to think that we could get all the flowers Katr wants and their shop is right across the street and it's chick-owned, which we like. Their website, however, is impossible to find via search engine. Think they'd give us a break on the flowers in exchange for a little search engine optimization? Yeah. I don't think so either.
Caterer #1 - best food, best drinks, best service, best package, best rep with the best name (Star) and the biggest price tag. Although I must say, I feel that if I'd made my standard "HOW much? Do I get a hand job with that?" joke, she might have said "I can work that hand job into your budget." Because she was THAT GOOD.
Caterer #2 - very good food, very good service, very nice rep, no package but definitely best presentation ideas around the whole cabaret thing. Also, they win points for sending me a charming, non-pushy e-mail the next day.
Caterer #3 - by the third caterer, we'd already had two drinks and we were pretty relaxed. The poor blond girl at the table looked terrified as we came over and it became clear that she was really just someone's assistant and had no idea what to do. Unlike the previous caterers, there was no glad-handing, meaningful eye contact, exchange of personal information AND, more importantly, she didn't offer us a drink, even though there were some very yummy looking skirt drink martinis on the table behind her. She handed us a package and pointed us towards the mini-Yorkshire puddings. We waited for her to try and sell us on the catering. She waited for us to leave. We did.
Caterer #4 - what can I say about Don? He was the only caterer to drop the F-bomb. Plus, he gave us jelly beans. I loved him.
I must say that I was impressed by how gamely Padu and I were greeted by all of caterer folk but you could tell that their initial thoughts went something like: "Does that poor fat girl know she's marrying a gay man?" They all seemed relieved and enthusiastic when we revealed that no! It was a lesbian wedding! HA ha! Feed us more wasabi risotto, monkeys! It kind of felt like that great moment in Elizabeth when the Duke of Anjou fakes Elizabeth out with the flute playing, laughs at his own joke and then whispers how he's excited to stroke her private areas. That guy was all class.
Speaking of class - we're not doing a sit-down dinner, but if we WERE, the table setting would HAVE to look like this:
I really think that all that was missing from this BDSM chic table setting were the teeny tiny ball-gag napkin rings.
On our way out, Padu made sure to grab a free Wedding Bells magazine and thank god he did. 'Cause nothing raises the tone in the ladies shitter like wedding magazines.
So, after consulting with my lady love, I think it's fair to say that we're going with The Great Hall as our gay wedding venue. We had asked the event planner, whose name rhymes with "Bandy", to put our date on hold until after the open house and I e-mailed her yesterday to let her know that our gay wedding at the Great Hall? Is ON like DONKEY KONG. At least, I think it is. It's been 24 hours and she hasn't e-mailed me back to confirm. Hmmm.
And so it begins.
