We used Classic to cater our wedding. To be honest, we feel a bit mixed about the experience. TLDR:…read morewe wound up giving four stars because although our bar situation was a disaster, food is more important and the food was better than most other wedding food.
The food - as foodies, we felt like Classic gave us very good wedding food (but it fell short of very good restaurant food). During our tasting, we were pretty blown away by the food -- all the flavors were excellent and all the food was perfectly cooked. Day of, a lot of the food was overcooked, and things were under sauced, so we missed a lot of the flavors from our tasting. The food was certainly better than most other weddings I've been to, but if I would have gotten the food at a restaurant I would have been disappointed. I know it's really difficult to cook in bulk. (FWIW though, people really loved the mashed potatoes -- and were still talking about them a week later.)
We were also extremely pleased with how Classic handled dietary restrictions. We had a number of people with restrictions, and everyone was able to eat, and no one got sick. They even worked with us to make our whole menu gluten free so that all of our (many) celiac guests could partake.
The drinks - our drinks were a disaster. And I think part of this is because our catering manager switched just a few months before the wedding. Our original catering manager had allowed us to create our own cocktail recipes. We love mixology so it felt very fitting for our wedding. We wanted our wedding to feel like a cocktail bar and not just have the standard wedding cocktail. However, our new catering manager pretty much lost her mind when she heard this, saying it's never done. Our conversations were weird, and we never figured out what the issues were so we assumed it was reluctance to do something different and thought they'd figure it out. However, it seems the issues were the bartenders can barely make a drink. Although we sent VERY specific recipes, i think only one of the bartenders followed them. The first drink I was given when I came down to my cocktail hour was supposed to be a lavender chamomile play on a French 75. But what I was actually given was lemon juice, soda, and gin. I literally spit it out, and had a mild panic attack that my guests were being served undrinkable drinks for our whole cocktail hour. It turns out, that only one bartender was making undrinkable drinks (and they continued to for most of the evening). Another one was making ok drinks, and one was making drinks correctly. No one could remember which bartender was making which drinks, so everyone remarked how inconsistent our drinks were. A number of times people had to toss drinks because they picked the wrong bartender.
I was also pretty pissed that although we had confirmed with our planner and classic a half a dozen times that they would pass drinks during cocktail hour, they never did. Afterwards my planner said it was because the drinks were too complicated. But they could have passed wine, or beer, or prebatched drinks (which we thought they were doing). We really didn't want a line at the bar, and there was one, so a month later, I'm still fuming about the disaster that was the bar. I think had we had more time, or better communication from the new catering manager, we could have worked something out that would have worked for us and them. But, instead, trying not to piss us off, I think she gave in knowing they couldn't hold up their end of the bargain.
The service - the service (aside from the bar and our catering manager) was good. All the catering staff were very kind, and rushed like crazy to finish our room flip. We appreciated that they designate one server just for the bride and groom!
The process - Our process was a bit of a mess because of the catering manager flip. But, were it not for that, I think it would have gone pretty smoothly. Classic are def pros at putting on events. We were happy with the process before the switch. Afterwards, we didn't really jive with the new catering manager, who was much more rigid than the original one. We might have been less off put by this, but, she also wasn't great at communicating the reasons behind her "nos" or "yes, with reservations". Our planner had told us that your classic experience very much depends on your catering manager, and based on our experience with two of them, that seems accurate.
