From the interview with Anne Unbedacht of Port Townsend conducted by Patience Rogge at the Fort Worden History Center on August 21, 2008.  Here she describes her former job in catering for the defunct Community Enterprises at Fort Worden, especially the weddings she helped plan:

“Actually the best and the worst one was the same one.  The kids getting married were in their 20’s and had careers.  One was working in Seattle and the other was finishing up a job in San Francisco and moving to Seattle, so they weren’t around to plan their wedding.  The mother of the bride, who lived in Atlanta was planning it, and the groom’s parents who lived in Seattle were planning a huge rehearsal dinner.  The mother in Atlanta was not sure how we were going to do this.  I assured her that I’d send the menus, set up a time to plan an hour to talk on the phone, that I did this for a living, it is painless, don’t worry. She was a wonderful treat to work with, we talked on the phone a lot.  On the other hand, the parents of the groom were not so much fun to deal with.  They were making a bigger deal out of the rehearsal dinner that they were throwing for a hundred and some people.  They were very pushy, the mom assigned the husband some things.  When I checked my email I’d have two or three from both of them.  They didn’t coordinate.  The kids had booked all the accommodations here, and they had booked the Kitchen Shelter for the rehearsal dinner.  When the mom first saw it, she almost had a heart attack.  While the kids were looking for a little more casual, she was looking for a little ritzier than you can do here at Fort Worden.  Most people don’t realize that you can actually make the Kitchen Shelter kind of pretty.  You can put linen down and if you get silverware and crystal on the tables and string lights, it can be very pretty.  I showed her pictures and tried to calm her down and she ended up being very happy but I lost a lot of sleep that weekend.

The weddings were a lot of fun.  A lot of receptions started out with a prayer and a unity candle lighting.  They’d usually try to light the candles up on Battery Tolles in the wind, but would give up when they couldn’t.  Those are some of my fun memories.”