The Laurel Tree

We hired Laurel Tree for their waitstaff services for our wedding of around 120 people recently and were happy with their service. We had a wedding at a non-traditional venue and had arranged for food to be catered by one of our favorite local restaurants which meant we needed to hire waitstaff to run the event. There are very few options in the RI area of companies who are willing to provide waitstaff without a full catering package and we are very grateful to hire Laurel Tree. They were able to come in at the last minute and staff our wedding after another vendor cancelled on us and they absolutely saved our event! Pia was lovely to work with and her team were all so nice. They set up tableware and chairs for us, seamlessly moved chairs from the ceremony to the reception, picked up the food from a nearby restaurant, served the buffet to our guests, served meals to our vendors, set up the dessert table, and repacked all of the tableware into rental crates for pickup at the end of the event. The service during the event was very smooth!
There were a few areas for improvement, but we would emphasize Laurel Tree was hired by us as a last-minute replacement a few weeks before the event and several of these details likely could have been ironed out if we both had more time to communicate and Laurel Tree had more time to review our event details.
- The setup on the morning of the wedding was a little rough, mainly because it seemed like they had not reviewed the detailed document we wrote for them (sent via email when we finalized our contract and printed for them at the event) that walked through all of the set up and where things needed to go, which led to our wedding party and families answering lots of questions before and during the wedding. We did not have an event coordinator hired for our wedding so we expected all our vendors to be generally self-sufficient. While our wedding party and family kindly pitched in to help with setup and answer questions, we should have allocated a specific point person or two to specifically work with the waitstaff.
- We had two electric soup warmers to serve hot soup during cocktail hour. However, the waitstaff hadn’t filled them with water (despite this detail being told to them during setup) so the soup was cold. Guests still enjoyed, but it was a little disappointing as this could have been easily fixed.
- There was a bit of delay in setting up the dessert table, which was unexpected and set our schedule back a little bit.
- Our guests complained that the waitstaff were extremely quick to take drink glasses away towards the end of the night. Given they didn’t stay the full time we had paid them for cleanup, the glassware guests were using could have waited to be cleaned up until the very end of the event.
- They were very clear when we finalized the contract that they would be providing waitstaff and not eventstaff which meant they wouldn’t help with packing or teardown of decor. The day might have gone a bit smoother had we called beforehand to review the event details we wrote up for them and if we had had more than a couple weeks before the event to iron out these details and allocation of tasks.

Overall, we are happy with the service they provided and would recommend them.

Pia & her mother were amazing. They were so kind and helpful the morning of my wedding and made sure i was stress free the entire event. We loved working with them!

You girls were great. Very professional, curtious and well organized. I felt like I was in good hands and could relax with you handling things.

Pia is wonderful. My initial venue had a flooding 5 days prior to my 50th Birthday celebration. They were working to have it ready in time, but it wasn't guaranteed. Hence, we had to be relocated several hours before my event, which is about 30 miles away from the original location. Pia assured me that she would send three wonderful persons to cover my event. The waitstaff were super sweet, professional, hard working, and jumped in to get things up and running. They were very helpful and kind. They improvised when they had to in order to keep things running smoothly. They are really a very hardworking, diligent waitstaff! I most certainly would use The Laurel Tree again. Thank you guys, so very much!

Pia helped elevate my mom's 60th birthday celebration to the most memorable night. She created a vision for the evening with the materials she found and provided (we were staying in a rental so I wasn't sure what would be there) that made the whole night even more special. She was polite and respectful of our family time while preparing and serving the meal, but also lovely to chat with when any of the guests initiated. I found her energy and professionalism so refreshing! We would absolutely call Pia for any waitstaffing needs in the future!