Wedding Stories | Jessica + Ian | Week 3: The Big Day | Orlando Science Center

We are so excited to share the grand finale to Jessica and Ian’s wedding story with you today! After three meetings and plenty of fluid communication with Puff ‘n Stuff Catering Special Event Planner, Heidi Brice, Jessica and Ian were ready to step out and enjoy their magical wedding day. A spectacular wedding like this one is produced by a collection of talented wedding pros working together to bring the couple’s vision and dreams to life. A special thank you to the Orlando Science Center, Encore Creations, VHVIDEO.COM, Chic Event Furniture, Harps Unlimited, The Redcoats, and Kristin Mizo Photography for your incredible contributions to Jessica and Ian’s special day.

Join us and watch the Curry-Garlic wedding day unfold!

Thank you for following Jessica and Ian’s wedding story with us for the last three weeks! We hope their journey inspired you and got you excited to begin planning your own special event. If you have questions or are ready to get started, just give us a call!

Wedding Stories | Jessica + Ian | Week 2: The Tasting | Orlando Science Center

Happy Tuesday and welcome to week two of Jessica Curry and Ian Garlic’s wedding story! If you missed last week’s post, be sure to catch up. Today, we are joining the happy couple just a few months before their big day as they taste the primary dishes in their wedding reception menu. The tasting is every couple’s favorite wedding planning meeting, and it’s ours too!

The cuisine is especially important to Jessica and Ian because cooking together, trying new foods, and discovering unique restaurants truly are a few of their favorite things. And if you haven’t noticed their “spicy surnames” yet, take a moment to think about their incredible fortune to find each other and fall into delicious foody love!

Jessica and Ian have chosen an Action Station menu that will offer their guests a variety of unique dishes prepared live by our chefs and presented as small plates. To learn more about Action Stations, click here!

Please join us as Jessica and Ian enjoy one of the things that set Puff ‘n Stuff Catering weddings apart – their complimentary, personal tasting!

If you watched closely, you caught a sneak peak of the custom dish incorporating both curry and garlic designed by our Executive Chef Paul Lorrain, exclusively for Jessica and Ian’s big day!

Again, thank you to our talented friends at VHVIDEO.COM for capturing this wedding story. Join us next week for the big reveal – Jessica and Ian’s wedding reception!

 

 

The Service Series: Focus on Action Stations

Whether you call them Chef Attended Action Stations, Performance Stations or Chef Bars (our favorite), this service style is HOT! Today’s feature is the last installment in our Service Series and is a specialty at Puff ‘n Stuff Catering.

Action stations are the most interactive ways to serve your guests and bring an added level excitement, entertainment and…action to your special event. Guests watch with excitement as their food is prepared to order by lively chefs! The concept is simple and can be adapted to most event styles:

• Cocktail Reception: server pass specialty cocktails, set-up full bars and sprinkle hors d’oeuvre portion action stations through out the space to encourage mingling, conversation and movement around the room.
• Chef Bar Party: arrange mixed size and height tables through out the event space, select your favorite mini plate portion action stations and enjoy! Guests explore Chef Bars at their leisure, select their preferred seats and experience a tapas-style dinner they won’t soon forget.
• Family Style Meal: couple a salad and side dish buffet with 2-3 entree portion action stations arranged evenly through out the room for a relaxed atmosphere with a twist.
• Formal Dinner: select upscale action stations with 2-3 complementary dishes at each station such as a mini steakhouse wedge salad, grilled and sliced filets and smashed potatoes. Provide assigned, formal seating to give guests the option to eat while mingling or comfortably in their seats.

Action stations can be set-up in formal event spaces, outdoors or in a private residence. The flexibility, interaction and creativity offered by this service style continues to increase its popularity for all event types including weddings, corporate events, and social events such as birthdays, anniversaries and bar/bat mitzvahs.

The Puff ‘n Stuff Catering team continues to “passionately perfect” the art of action stations and we love creating unique and personal stations for our clients. Stations can be developed from family recipes, favorite dishes and our vast menu of action stations. Some of our most popular action stations include Lobster Mac ‘n Cheese in which our rich, creamy lobster mac is freshly prepared and served from a hollowed 80 pound wheel of Grana Padano cheese, and the Vertical Bento Box – a rotating, Asian-inspired display filled with multiple dishes such as our Asian Trio Plate and King Crab with Pink Grapefruit served on peeled grapefruit slices finished with a tangerine gastrique and lemon foam.

Why not try this growing trend at your next special event? For more inspiration, keep scrolling to see highlights from the Puff ‘n Stuff Catering kitchen and check out this Perfect Wedding Guide post by our friend Jody Wimer, board member of the International Caterers Association and President of JPC Event Group in Pennsylvania!

Thank you to K & K Photography and Unrue Photo for sharing your images in this post!

Photo Credits:
K & K Photography, Jeff Kathrein, www.kandkphotography.com
Unrue Photo, John J. Unrue, www.unruephoto.com

Destination Wedding Venues in Your Own Backyard

Have you dreaming about planning a romantic wedding in Tuscany or a glamorous affair in New York, but woken up to a local wedding reality? Well, we’re happy to share that you can have a fabulous wedding in your hometown that feels like it’s in a land far-far-away…without breaking the bank!

Central Florida and the Tampa-St. Pete areas are home to numerous venues that lend a destination vibe without the destination price tag. Local venues not only reduce travel expenses for you and your guests, they can reduced your stress level and be perfectly transformed to resemble the exact destination that you wished for. Today we would like to share some of our favorite local “destination” venues in hopes they can make your wedding vision come true!

The Big City
With Broadway lights and stunning glamour, New York has a place in everyone’s heart. The Mezz, a Downtown Orlando venue, has the bright lights, chic design and city-scaped floor-to-ceiling windows to bring a New York themed event come to life!

 

Las Vegas, NV
Adventurous and modern, Heaven Events Center is the perfect venue for a Las Vegas style event. Filled with glitz and state of the art technology like LED lighting and HD TVs, this locale close to Central Florida’s attractions is sure to keep guests thrilled just like the fast city of Vegas!

 

Travel Back in Time
The Ballroom at Church Street offers elegant Victorian style in the heart of Downtown Orlando with large detailed stain glass windows, double grand staircases, and spacious ballrooms. If you yearn to celebrate in classic style, this space can be decked to fit any fairytale wedding!

 

Tuscany, Italy
Couples longing to venture into Italian wine country for their big day need only to travel to Sarasota’s Powel Crosley Estate. This large stone mansion is surrounded by beautiful gardens setting the scene for a breathtakingly charming and romantic wedding.

 

Tropical Paradise
Paradise Cove offers a lush, tropical backdrop for a scenic waterfront wedding. Nestled near Disney’s Lake Buena Vista area, Paradise Cove’s thatched-roof and open-air patio, beach front bars and sandy shores will make you feel like you’re miles away from the city!

 

Latin Locales
If you seek venue rich in cultural history with a latin flare, The Cuban Club in Ybor City is a must-see. With its large ballrooms, theaters and open-air space, this space can transform a party into an exciting, fun-filled fiesta!

The Service Series: Focus on Plated Meals

Welcome to the Part 2 of The Service Series! Today we’re exploring at the elements of plated meals. As wedding and event trends come and go, plated service is elegant and timeless.

Each meal is meticulously prepared and plated in the kitchen, and personally presented by servers who make a direct connection with each and every guest. In addition to the extra level of attention given to guests, seated meals create an intimate ambiance and the perfect environment for conversation. And for hosts with creative culinary ambitions, the plate can easily become the canvas for a beautifully designed entrée.

From a practical standpoint, plated meals significantly reduce food waste as portions are planned precisely to the final guest count. Guests with special dietary requirements can be discretely served a meal that suits their needs without offering this selection to the full guest list. This style is also extremely beneficial during structured events with a program or when the host wants to control the flow of event. Service of the various courses can be timed around a speaker or special event to ensure the proper level of attention to the event’s focus or to signal times of free conversation.

Although plated service delivers a high level of guest interaction, it’s also the most labor intensive and commonly the most expensive service style. For plated meals where guests pre-select between multiple entrées, assigned seating is required to guarantee the plates are delivered correctly.

When choosing between service styles for your next event, weigh the benefits of plated service alongside the style of your event, the mood you hope to create and of course your budget! And remember — the pros at Puff ‘n Stuff Catering are here to help answer your questions. To get inspired, take a peek at some of our delectable plated entrées!

Special thanks to the photographers who shared their work! Damon Tucci Photography & Jerry McGaghey Photography

The Service Series: Focus on Buffets

When planning a catered event, future hosts have many questions for our team of catering pros including one of the most frequently asked questions – how should the meal be served?

There are three primary service styles: plated, buffet and action stations – and we love to educate our clients about the benefits of each and create a personalized service blend that best suits their individual event goals. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be giving you an inside look at the strengths and challenges of each service style to help you make the best choice for your next event!

Today’s featured style is the simplest and one of the most popular service options — the buffet. Many brides and event hosts warm up to this crowd-pleasing setup for its variety, flexibility, and efficiency. When faced with large groups or those with diverse tastes, buffets offer stress-free planning by allowing multiple entrée and accompaniment selections and give guests the freedom to fill their plates with only their favorite dishes. Buffets can also be arranged strategically to manage the flow of guests around a room, and divided into themed tables to organize multiple cuisine styles. Requiring less service staff than a traditional plated dinner, a buffet is a very cost effective way to serve any size group. In addition to decorating guest seating tables, buffet tables can also be lavishly decorated, decked out for a theme party or simply elegant. The choice is yours!

A buffet style meal may not be the best choice if your goal is to create an intimate or sophisticated atmosphere at your event. And although caterers are typically able to guarantee the minimum amount of food needed to satisfy guests, buffets are the most likely to end with leftover food. As with any service style chosen, buffets can include perceived challenges or cons – the key is to evaluate all of the options and decide what’s most important to you.

With efficient costs and endless options, one thing is for certain – buffets are back!

Corporate Cost Effective Lunch Options

Needing lunch catered for you while under a tight budget?

Puff ‘n Stuff has the solution for all of your corporate catering needs. Need to provide meals for your staff that will agree with varying dietary needs? Puff ‘n Stuff can provide solutions for a great corporate lunch for your entire staff. They have seasonal menus to try and can also provide daily lunch specials at $10.95 a person or will work with you to meet your specific budget. Puff ‘n Stuff Catering does corporate lunch catering in West Orlando, throughout Central Florida and the Tampa Bay Area.

Large Corporate Event Catering

What size corporate events does Puff ‘n Stuff cater? We can go as small as just a couple of people, if that is what the client wants.  We can also go as large as 6,000-7,000 people. We did a grand opening to Target, it was a back to school for UCF.  What we did is that we partnered with Target, while they provided the food, we prepared it on-site. It was a nice spin on what we normally do, but we can cater for corporate events as large as the client would like.

Types of Cuisine Offered

At Puff ‘n Stuff, we specialize in a different variety of cuisines. We don’t try to pigeon-hole ourselves into just one, we try to make sure there is something there for just about everyone. We work with a lot of family recipes. We have customers that come to us from time to time and have an “Aunt Erma’s Special Cookie” that they’ve done. We have a lot of ethnic dishes that people come to us for and we certainly take a lot of time to work through those things and put a special twist or special twist for them and of course we give them an opportunity to taste it in advance. [The cuisine choices] are extremely diverse; we really try to do just about everything. We have traditional American Cuisine as well as a wide variety of different ethnic cultures. We are now getting into the Kosher side of the world as well, working within Kosher cuisine as well as our Indian Brides as well. We are beginning to see a pretty big influx of indian business and we are working with that community to try and develop some great things.

Average Wedding Size

The average wedding is probably 100 people. I am finding that the trend for 2010-2011 is a smaller guest list, so they have a little more money to spend on the food which is kind of nice. But we do as large as 500 people and as small as 25 people.

1 2 3 Next »