ok, so my partner and i did a wedding in winchester yesterday for 65 people, and i am still getting over it. the house was one of those 8,000 square foot jobs, on a huge lot that seemed to have a field in front and back. i was therefore surprised that this couple had notbothered to actually weed their foundation plantings, nor mulch around them- there were 3 foot tall thistles and all sorts of healthy and large crab grass and other assorted pesky plants. there were 2 middleschool age boys living there-one would think that they could have handled the big weeds without worrying that they would mess up the yard.......when we took the job, we offered to bring along staff people to bus tables, and serve drinks-but no- they had a 'housekeeper' who would be taking care of those details. the bride herself had bought all of the beer, wine, soft drinks, etc, and the housekeeper would keep them all set out on a self-serve bar. ha-we were already in the upstairs kitchen working on benedectine finger sandwiches when this little woman arrives and introduced herself to the bride- apparantly she cleans the house everyother week during the day when groom( who lived here before the wedding) was at work, and had never met the bride. turns out that she didn't know many things about the house- like where the temperature controls were located- so when the cake with white chocolate icing(from some lex baker, not us) started to sweat from the heat- we couln't turn down the airconditioning.......the icing started to literally melt off of this cake..........anyway, the housekeeper had no instinct of any kind on what one did during a party- she seemed to think that she was there to clean up after it was all over. think back to gone with the wind- the maid played by butterfly mcqueen- 'i don't know nothing about serving parties, miss scarlet........' that was the modern version of this housekeeper. we found her sitting on one of our coolers in the pantry at one point and she admitted that she was hiding out from the evil wedding coordinator and her equally evil mother the florist. that we could understand because we tried to avoid them as well. these women were like charicitures of their roles- if i hadn't been on the job i would have laughed at the black comedy of it all. they had this little habit of coming up to jerry or me and saying stuff like 'someone needs to start picking up plates....' jerry answered with what became out standard reply to these women- 'you had better find the housekeeper.....' someone needs to make sure that the guests don't take the pop cans to their tables' someone needs to get more cokes' someone needs to make sure the dog doesn't get out of the pantry. someone needs to move this coffee table out of the way. someone needs to move that sofa. someone needs to cut the cake(it wasn't our cake, and the bride had not mentioned cutting the cake but jerry did it anyway) someone needs to clean out this sink......at this point i almost turned and smacked this woman- as i was washing out our serving pieces in that sink- and i wasn't going to clean out that sink until i was finished. she almost accused us of taking some of her leftover flowers 'someone has stolen our freesias....' she exclaimed as she came out of the pantry- followed by her little assitant with the freesias in her hand saying- 'they were right there in the sink....' jerry and the evil florist got into it when the florist tried to put a hurricane candle arrangement under an airconditioning vent- even though the candle was in glass the forced air kept putting it out...... the food went over well. we only hope that the guests do not blame us for the quality of champagne offered at the toast-which couldn't have cost over $3 a bottle. i guess when you live in a house that had to have cost $350,000, you can't afford someone to weed or decent wine.......one more interesting note from the days events- we passed a stretch suburban- like a limosine only with a large suv- it was really strange- we couldn't figure out why someone would bother- like making a stretch vw beetle........what's the point......