Transportation Tricks

Organizing your wedding or event transportation can be tricky and frustrating.  The details are important and knowing what to ask for is key.  This element can be costly, but necessary.  If you're not sure if buses are needed, here are some rules to help you decide:

You DO need transportation for your wedding guests if...

• The host hotel(s) are not in walking distance to the ceremony and reception venues
• Your wedding is a destination wedding, where more than 50% of the guests will be traveling and staying in hotels
• The ceremony venue is not walking distance from the reception venue
• Your friends are likely to try to drink and drive

You DO NOT need transportation for your wedding guests if...

• The venues and hotels are all in walking distance from each other
• All of your guests are local and will have their own cars
• If only a few of your guests are from out of town you can consider a small option for transportation, like an executive van

Here's how wedding transportation companies work:

BUSES

There are two different types of buses, 55 passenger and 29 passenger.  Some companies may have a different seating arrangement and will have 52 and 27 or the like, but the gist is there are big ones and small ones.  Don't try to have a bus make multiple trips.  Guests will either get to the wedding way too early or just in time and the chances of them being late is too great.  Some bus companies charge a minimum of 3-5 hours for their wedding buses. Some will allow you to do what's called a "transfer" or a one-way trip.  Some companies will only offer transfers for daytime weddings.  Make sure you understand what can be done before you contract.  Some companies can offer you the option to pay gratuity in advance.  If they do, take the option.  Its one less thing to worry about on the wedding day.  Make sure to ask the company if they can put a sign on the bus or in the window that has your wedding name on it, like "Smith-Jones Wedding" or "Kim & Kanye".  If you're traveling from uptown New Orleans to the French Quarter, get a police escort that can take you through traffic lights.  You'll save an hour off of your trip. Finally, when you plan your bus pickup points, choose hotels that are host hotels or locations that are central to all of your hotels.  Full sized buses are NOT allowed in the French Quarter streets, so if you're a French Quarter wedding, choose locations on the perimeter of the Quarter, like Canal Street, Rampart Street, St. Peter, or Esplanade Ave.  Tell your guests where the pickup points are via your event website, the welcome gifts, and via email if possible. Then don't forget to let all of the hotels know the plan so that they can communicate to guests that have questions.

LIMOS

As with buses, there are companies that require a certain number of hours for weddings and there are companies that offer transfers. For a wedding limo, a transfer can often take the bride and her father from the get-ready location to the ceremony and then wait for the bride and groom to take them to the reception all in the same transfer.  For the bridal party, you can have one limo pickup the guys and bring them to the ceremony and then go back and pickup the girls to get them to the church, only if the trips fit within an hour or so time frame.  If you don't have a wedding planner, ask the limo company to help you figure this out.  I always like to have one or two 8-10 passenger limos for the bridal party and a separate, 6 passenger limo for parents.  Then the bride and her father can take one car or rolls that will later bring the bride and groom to the reception.

I DO NOT recommend that you use Louisiana Limousine aka Northshore Limousine aka New Orleans Charter.  They once made a huge mistake in my transportation order and then cursed me out saying "All you white b*itches are the same"  .....I know.  I couldn't believe it either!

That being said, here are some transportation companies in New Orleans that I can recommend:

For Limousines, buses, party buses and those cute little streetcar buses:

  

For Rolls Royce and Small shuttle buses:

 U n i q u e   T r a n s p o r t a t i o n

To plan your wedding in New Orleans, visit www.allaboutevents.net

I Ate WHAT??

I ate WHAT???...

Last year, my friend, Terese, came in town for her first visit to New Orleans from California.  Being an avid lover of all things New Orleanian, she had a “to-do” list of things she wanted to experience during her trip.  The list read as follows:

·         Eat Jambalaya

·         Eat a Shrimp Po-Boy

·         Eat a Roast Beef Po-boy

·         Eat Crawfish Etouffee

·         Eat a Hubigs Pie

·         Eat Red Beans and Rice

·         Eat Beignets

·         Drink a Hurricane

We spent several days checking off items on her list, researching and polling locals to find out who made the best of each dish.  I proudly gave her the brief histories I knew of the city and its quirky culture, determined to prove that life here is better.

On a recent return visit to New Orleans (her third trip now), Terese’s list, much shorter than the last, started and ended with a “Surf and Turf” Po-Boy from Parkway Bakery.  We went straight from the airport to the restaurant and got there at 9:30pm, just in the nick of their 10pm closing time.  I’d never been there at that hour before, when the noisy, busy wonderfulness of the lunch and dinner scenes died down.  The place had a few locals, leisurely wrapping up their current meals and chatting about the next, as New Orleanians always do.  The employees had a moment to chat as they joked around with us and didn’t give even one indication of being annoyed that we came in so late.  One man in particular, a manager perhaps, came outside to our table for a chat, bringing us each an official Parkway Bakery paper hat, which we proudly wore throughout the rest of our meal.  I beamed as I watched her eyes light up over the enormous bread as she took her first bite and was once again proud of my city and its unique heritage.

We mentioned to the manager that Terese was from out of town and that this was her first request when she got off the plane.  I’m sure he’d heard this before, but he didn’t show it as he welcomed her back.   She told him how much she loved it.

 “I don’t know what it is,” she said, “but you can’t get this kind of sandwich in LA.”

 “You know, I’ll let you in on a secret…,” the manager replied.  We sat, Po-Boys in mid-air, holding our breath as we waited for him to tell us the secret recipe for the coveted roast.

And then, in just eight short words, he shattered my illusion of all that is uniquely New Orleans.  “It’s just Yankee pot roast on French Bread!”

My reaction to this statement was one I did not expect.  Aside from practically spitting out my food, I felt slightly insulted and a little embarrassed.  Here I was, bragging about our local flavor and how you just can’t create it in the same way anywhere else.  And here was this guy, elaborating on a common recipe that any Yankee with a pot and a clove of garlic could throw together.  It was as if my Southern Belle ancestors had taken over my body at the sound of the word “Yankee.”  I hastily searched for an excuse.  Being a considerably below-average cook, I couldn’t argue the recipe.  So I threw out the first thing that came into my head.

 “It’s the bread!”  I spat out, a little too loudly.  “The bread is different here because of the humidity and the water.”  I was unable to fathom, let alone accept, that one of my favorite local dishes wasn’t local at all.

I knew at least some part of that statement was true, but didn’t go on because I was really just trying to change the subject back to our one-of-a-kindness and away from the dreaded Yankees.

After Terese left, I decided to look up the history of the Po-Boy.  To my relief, the most informative site, www.poboyfest.com/history, said nothing about the Yanks.  While the recipe for an authentic  roast beef Po-Boy was not specified, the article explains that the first sandwich of its kind was created by two Cajun brothers who relocated to New Orleans to open a French Market coffee stand.  During an unsuccessful streetcar drivers’ strike in 1929, the Martin Brothers offered free food to any union streetcar driver.  The popular campaign brought out-of-work, empty-pocketed members of Division 194 to the stand daily.  To keep up with the demand, the brothers partnered with a nearby baker, John Gendusa, to create a 40-inch loaf of bread, rectangular from end to end, that would yield a 20 inch half-loaf sandwich, feeding more workers than its pointy-ended, 30 inch predecessor.  

Bennie Martin said, "We fed those men free of charge until the strike ended. Whenever we saw one of the striking men coming, one of us would say, 'Here comes another poor boy.'” 

You know the rest…

And so, while I accept that my favorite Po-Boy shop’s recipe is of….ahem…northern influence, I sit proudly at their table, paper hat atop my head, knowing that, while “they” may have claim to the flavor of the meat, we’re the ones who made it better by putting it on the bread—our bread…the humid bread made with our very own water!