Regal Catering

Second to capturing your own memories, your guests will remember the food and entertainment, for the most part. For food, we had local cuisine, prepared by Regal Catering. I can't seem to stop hearing from everyone about how amazing the food was. Todd and I are not local to the Lowcountry, our guests ranging from NC, CA, OH, AZ, FL and MO. All of which LOVED the food. (Serving Soul Food or Lowcountry cuisine of Shrimp 'n Grits and Crab Dip is tricky when you're serving New Englanders and West Coasters. But Regal pulled it off with a BANG!

My intent of this review is not to discredit the food selection that Regal provided to our guests and our wedding party. The food was very good. However, the service left much to be desired. Months before our wedding date, my husband and I wanted to make changes to our menu. We were told by Regal that changes could not be made and that accommodations to help us would not be considered. In addition, when my husband and I arrived at the wedding we were told that the caterers failed to display all three types of wine. Therefore, our guests thought that we were only offering a blush wine when in all actuality we also had white and red wine selections. Because of this mishap, many of our guests chose to drink beer instead of blush wine causing our overstocked beer supply to run low before the end of the reception. Again, this review is not an attempt to give a bad review on the food selection. Our menu consisted of three sandwich selections, teriyaki chicken, crab dip, spinach and artichoke dip, fruit with chocolate fondue, cheese and vegetable trays, shrimp and grits along with other items... all of which tasted very good. It's a shame that the service ruined our experience with Regal Catering.

We used Regal Catering for our wedding reception on April 23, 2010 and it was FABULOUS! The food was amazing, as well as the food displays. Our wedding guests are still talking about how great the food was! The service provided by Regal Catering was also great! I did not have a wedding planner, putting me in charge of timing the cake cutting, bouquet toss, etc. Michelle took this responsibility from me without even asking and did a fabulous job! Everything was timed perfectly! She also did a great job at reading the guests- for example, she suggested that we cut the cake soon because my grandfather (and other older guests) were getting tired. The entire staff was incredibly helpful and polite from the initial meeting to the end of the reception. Everything exceeded my expectations! I will certainly recommend Regal Catering to everyone!

Dear Michelle,

Your company catered our wedding reception on February 27, 2010. We wanted to say first of all that we enjoyed the food, thought it was very good, and did not hear one bad thing said about the food from anyone that attended our reception. Thank you for that. We both thought you did a terrific job on the food and also the presentation of the food.

We did have some issues with your service overall however. We contracted with you and your company to provide food for our reception, initially from 630pm to 1030pm. We then revised our contract, paid you extra -- for an additional 30 minutes, as we wanted the reception to begin at 600pm and go through 1030pm. Although neither of us was actually at the reception at 6pm, it is our understanding that you did indeed begin serving food at the agreed upon, contracted time of 6 ‘o clock. Nowhere in your contract, or in your words to us, did you say that the time you were hired for included the cleaning up and breaking down of tables, etc. In fact, it was specifically mentioned by us that there would be food available from 6pm to 1030pm and you confirmed that. That was not the case in practice.

We had the Visitor’s Center until midnight and were supposed to stop playing music by 11pm. We were enjoying the reception and had every intention of wrapping things up by 1030pm in order to meet the requirements of the Visitor’s Center, however before 10pm we began to see you and Daria talking with other vendors and asking when they were going to be finishing up. That was completely unprofessional and not your role to be doing that. Your role was to provide food and the rentals from Snyder. During our last dance, you and Daria even had the overhead lights turned on and most of the tables broken down. Many of our guests (especially the wedding party and our families) had to go looking for their belongings because your company had moved them from tables in order to remove the tables from the Visitor’s Center. Neither of us would have had any problem with your company and employees breaking down tables that were out of the way and not being utilized anymore, but we took offense to our guests’ personal belongings being moved out of YOUR way.

As we were preparing to leave the venue, after basically feeling as though we were being kicked out, we were stopped by one of your employees and handed the top tier of our wedding cake. We were getting ready to go outside and have pictures taken of our departure, and we had a cake to worry about. We had hired a coordinator in order to not have to worry about those kinds of things...

It should have been our night to enjoy and to end at the time we wanted. We had fulfilled our obligation to you by settling our bill prior to the wedding day (with the additional money for the extra half hour of service we requested) and we should have been treated with more respect than we were, and our guests and other vendors should have also been treated with respect. We do not feel that you handled yourself very professionally throughout the process.

We would like to be compensated by your company for taking the responsibility on itself to clear food and tables prior to the contracted time and get a refund for the extra half hour that we paid for and did not get. We would be glad to come and pick this up from you or you could send it to the above address.

Further, in the future you might want to explain to your brides and grooms that the service time in your contract includes clean up and break down of rental tables etc, so they will be aware of that when they begin to decide for how long to hire you. It was certainly not clear to us and we would have required more time (and paid more) for our guests to stay comfortable and not feel pressured to leave.

We will be posting a copy of this letter on the Wedding Mapper website (www.weddingmapper.com) where we have reviewed all of our vendors. Also, we will be brutally honest with anyone that asks regarding the lack of customer service we received from your company. Again, we will take nothing away from the quality of your food or the presentation of the food – both were excellent.

Thank you,

Steve and Jami S