Free Food = You're Hired

"I was told there would be samples," I said.

This is how I open up every visit to a wedding caterer. My first experience with these food pushers was at a bridal show when we first got engaged, which must have been four or five years ago by now, and I ate enough roast beef-horseradish sandies to keep my GERD on overdrive until two weeks ago. It was fabulous.

But recently we've had a string of bad luck with caterers: No free food, no free booze, no free pharmies. Then why am I here? If there's nothing to consume couldn't we just have done this on the phone or on the interwebs? I hoped for a fruit platter, perhaps. Maybe a nice Goat cheese sampling with crisps, or pigs in a blanket and wine in a box.

One caterer kept us 2 1/2 hours without even offering a glass of water, and then after refusing to talk money at the table she never even ended up sending us an estimate! Cold-hearted, food-hoarding bastards.

Well, I'm happy to report, on Sunday we got our first real free meal on the backs of a caterer. And we weren't freeloading off just any caterer -- we ate off a caterer that gives his proceeds to AIDS/HIV patients!

We hit the motherf'nload. For more than an hour Deb and I sat in the office of a warehouse and chowed: "Traditional" coleslaw, multi-colored chips with salsa AND guac, two-potato salad (who knew there were two kinds!), mini-pulled beef sandwiches in little buns ("Mini sandwiches are very in," we were told) and mini-pulled chicken sandwiches. Caterer Dude even gave us leftovers -- so much that the two of us have already had FIVE follow-up meals between us, and as you can see from this pic we've got more shreds of meat chilling in Tupperware.

Even after we're married we're going to go for lunch and food shopping at caterers like this one every week. How are they gonna know if we're already married? Make up a few bogus names and email addresses, and the scam could go on for years. Then, we move.