Wedding Caterer Reveals What Happened After Bride Gave Her Wrong Date

An events caterer has described facing her "absolute worst-case scenario" after a bride informed her that the wedding she was to serve food at the next day was happening later that afternoon.

Emmy Rener did not launch her business, Sophisticated Spreads, as a wedding caterer per se. "I graduated high school during the peak of the pandemic and knew I did not want to go to college yet," she told Newsweek.

"I loved making cheeseboards for friends and family, and launched the business with very humble intentions of delivering locally within Los Angeles. When we first launched, grazing tables weren't really a thing because of COVID-19, so I was delivering cheeseboards around my neighborhood and to anyone who would order."

The desire to serve high-quality food at a wedding remains of paramount importance to most soon-to-be-married Americans. Well, almost all of them anyway. In The Knot's 2023 Global Wedding Report, 86 percent of U.S. respondents who got married over the previous 12 months said they hired a professional wedding caterer to do the job. That's a higher percentage than in any country in the world, according to the data.

But, as with anything related to a wedding, sometimes things can go wrong. The key thing is how people respond to these setbacks.

Over time, Rener's Sophisticated Spreads was garnering attention from celebrity clients like Sofia Vergara and began to cater to events like weddings. Everything was going well until one particular marriage ceremony last fall.

"I had gone back and forth with the bride about the grazing table," Rener said. "She had told me the wedding was August 27, and we would be arriving at 3:30 p.m. to set up for the event that was starting at 5:30 p.m."

Rener said she followed up with the client in the week before the event, but at around 10 a.m. on August 26, she began to receive a series of "frantic" emails from the bride. The first read: "Looking forward to the spread tonight for the wedding! Thank you again for doing this."

Within five minutes, the bride had sent a second email labeled "urgent". She wrote that she must have "accidentally" told them the wedding was on the 27th and asking if there was any way Rener could pull it off with just five hours' notice.

"My mind immediately went into a state of panic," Rener said. "For a charcuterie-board company, or any sort of events company, this sort of situation is an absolute worst-case scenario, and it is what my nightmares are made of. When I first started my business, I would have nightmares about business screw-ups exactly like this happening, and I called these my cheese dreams. Never did I think it would actually happen!"

Once the initial panic had died down, Rener said she went into "action mode" as she attempted to work out how she was going to pull off a $3,000 cheese table in just five hours, with no items purchased and a 90-minute drive to the venue.

"I called my dad, who is also my business partner, and looped him into the situation. After we had a shared mental freak-out moment together, we took a moment and started strategizing," Rener said. "I went to one store for shopping; he took the other. We canceled our plans for that day, and went into straight-up crisis mode. Within two hours of receiving this email, we had completed the shopping and were chopping cheeses to make it happen."

Despite the circumstances, Rener was able to deliver a "beautiful" table of food on time, much to the relief of the bride. "She was the most apologetic emotional bride I have seen, as to be expected considering, at 8 that morning, she thought her guests would not be eating," Rener said. "She threw her arms around my dad and I, and thanked us to the high heavens for everything we did."

Thankfully, Rener has been able to laugh at it since, posting a series of videos to TikTok describing her experience. The clips, posted under the handle @sophisticatedspreads, have been watched over 1.5 million times.

Though it may have been stressful, Rener considers the experience something of a "learning curve" and has always made a point of triple-checking dates and locations ever since.