HEADWATERS CAFE

Getting married is such a hassle that I can't believe that anyone can bear to do it more than once. Our neighbor (a minister) calls the wedding industry "the wedding machine", and that feels about right. Vendors seem to have special more expensive rates for wedding-related events, and every additional cost and unnecessary service is justified with "you don't want to cut corners on this special day, do you?" In contrast, dealing with Jason was a breath of fresh air. We told him our budget (not very high as these things go), and that flavor was more important than formality. He let us know what he could do within our budget, and offered a few alternatives for side dishes and whatnot. To quote from his e-mail where he suggested the menu: "the food, even though it is not fancy would be good quality." Yes! Thank you Jason for not obsessively upselling, super-sizing, and generally treating our checkbook like your personal piggy bank. If only other wedding vendors could learn from your example. So, leading up to the event, working with Jason was great. He drew on his experience to tell us the things that we needed to think about, and he accommodated our nit-picky requests, like asking for him to use biodegradable paper plates (His truck runs on bio-diesel, so our attitudes on the environment aligned nicely). It felt like he was a partner who wanted our event to go well just as much as we did, and all our interactions went extremely smoothly. When the event finally came around, the food was great, the location (on the banks of the Columbia River just upstream from the Bridge of the Gods) was gorgeous, and our guests - many of who traveled from outside Oregon for the event - were enchanted. Jason kept cool as a cucumber as he grilled dinner for 100 people singlehandedly - quite a sight to see. Our only regret is that we weren't able to take advantage of the Airstream trailer that Jason sometimes uses to cater events - there wasn't time to get it from Stevenson to the event that he planned to cater the next day. All in all, my wife and I can't speak highly enough about our experience with Jason, and we hope to book him again soon - maybe we'll have to have a 1-year anniversary party, who knows?