My husband and I are not Jewish, don't keep kosher, and have been really lucky to experience some…read moreamazing food in amazing places. When we were looking for a caterer for our wedding in the Prospect Park Picnic House, they told us we had to use one from their list of approved caterers. We spoke to ALL of them. We ended up going with Judy Marlow and her crew at Simply Divine and they were all amazing!
She recognizes great people and keeps them on her crew. Andi our event manager was on point, responsive, and wonderful!! Our chefs, bartenders, and servers knew their business and even their sanitation staff were super friendly and happy for us. (We had to run by their station a few times in the evening, to make it to the basement and they were all smiles with us!)
Our top 3 reasons we went with Simply Divine (because, reality):
-Price. Who are we kidding. Weddings are crazy expensive but while Simply Divine was on the higher end of the spectrum, after the initial round of queries, Judith was willing to work with us on editing the menu and to help us make the choices which helped us get to a common ground.
-Plating. At the price points wedding food costs, the food is usually decent but her kitchen has delicious food and her plating is really gorgeous and different and I WANTED them so much for our wedding.
-She hires nice and competent people. All the kitchen crew we interacted with during our tasting were friendly and genuinely seemed happy to see us (every other tasting we did, we maybe got to meet 1 or 2 people who barely made eye contact with us and scurried away asap to leave us with the pitch person). There is just no substitute for nice people who get the job done on the big day. Your wedding day is ridiculously stressful in ways you'd never imagine. Having everyone there on your team, trying to help you have the best day ever, and who you feel are also totally happy for stranger you and your new spouse, that is priceless.
I think the only downside I experienced, which is no fault of Simply Divine but I think is something some future brides might want to know, is specific to our venue, The Picnic House combined with how Judy runs the ship. When doing a max capacity, sit down dinner in the space, they need the stage/fireplace area for kitchen set up. Throughout the entire planning process, I had imagined that the kitchen would be set up on the opposite wall (between the pillars) and that we'd have that area for the sweetheart table and later evening events. When it came down to the actual logistics planning a few weeks before the wedding, what really needed to happen became clear. I expressed my disappointment and while Judy tried to think of other ways, she explained it just wasn't possible with our size party+ dance floor. I believe with her experience she knows it would have been intolerably cramped (it was already cramped enough how it worked out because we had so many people- so also, not her fault!) if I had forced the issue. That being said, looking at my pictures with the opposite end of the Picnic House being the focal point, I am disappointed with the background of every picture on that least architecturally interesting wall at the venue (which is 70% of my reception pictures, including pictures of the cake and cake cutting) and wish I had had enough time and forewarning to make or get myself together enough to create a new rental of a backdrop or something of visual interest that wasn't a brick wall or a seam in the plaster. Even now, months after the wedding, as we go through these photos, this is the only regret/wish I had done it differently feeling I have about our wedding.