I helped with a wedding with several hundred guests catered by M&O. Jordan as a person was a clear communicator. The food was delicious.
However, the set-up (name cards/place settings/centerpieces) was at a glacial pace such that there was no time for wedding helpers to verify all hundreds of name cards were placed at the correct seats by M&O staff. A second consequence was that guests were unable to mingle in the reception hall any earlier despite the ceremony having ended early, and some guests were forced to wait outside despite the cold. Jordan attempted to offer alternatives, but the set up staff did not speed up the set up process, and guests continued to wait outside the reception hall in a standing room only lobby area (and expressed frustration about that).
Name cards were swapped/the opposite of what the bride outlined in the seating chart, so that at long rectangular tables a husband/wife were sitting at opposite ends. The staff potentially were not from M&O (potentially outsourced from a different company) but some did not clarify seating, and as a result, mixed up all the food orders. Some individual waitstaff were quite good about verifying name card placements but others did not verify them at all. Hopefully no one had a severe allergic reaction that night, as the seating chart from the bride and the reality of where names were placed were completely different for some tables.
M&O also took boxes of glasses filled with water one by one to set up (instead of wheeling out several carts which would have expedited the process) and set everything up extremely slowly. Staff also served only 2 plates at a time, with about 6-8 people being served at a time. At a large wedding, this was disastrous because it took more than 40 minutes for them to serve the main course to everyone. This threw off the whole schedule of speeches so in the end we were more than an hour behind schedule.
They also expressed a preference for people to be seated while the courses were being served due to the tight space (the tables were quite close together because the venue should not have allowed so many guests in that particular hall/room), which is a tad unreasonable at a wedding with several hundred people. In the end, guests couldn't enjoy the photo booth nor mingle as freely, and the schedule was extremely behind because speeches couldn't go on while people were in the middle of being served.
Not sure if M&O outsourced their waitstaff to a 3rd party company that night, but would not recommend to anyone unfortunately despite the food tasting good. read more
