Diary of a Retired Catering Manager

Forty-five years in hotel catering. Roughly 1,500 weddings. And a great many stories that were never going to fit on a banquet event order.

I'm Valerie Lehman. I started in 1980 as an Executive Office Receptionist -- my job was to open the mail, with a letter opener -- and worked my way up through the Red Lion Sea-Tac, the Westin Seattle, Embassy Suites, the Westin Bonaventure, the Sheraton Fairplex, eight years as Social Catering Manager at the Millennium Biltmore, and a last decade at the Hilton Pasadena.

This channel is the spoken edition of "Diary of a Retired Catering Manager": the business of it, the absurdity of it, and the part almost nobody teaches -- how to ask a good question and then actually listen.

Ballrooms, contracts, banquet math, wedding etiquette, and the $50,000 of white carpet that existed for eighteen hours.

Read the full journal at PrincessValerie.net.

Princess Valerie LLC | Pasadena, California