This document was prepared by Kosharot and it provides an in-depth look of many of the issues you should be addressing prior to being seated and eating at a catered affair. Ideally, a catered affair should display a valid teudat kashrut for the event you are attending and this would be evident by the teuda being dated, stating the name of the baal simcha and signed and sealed by the hashgacha.
Click here to view the Hebrew article.
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I would like to share with you a rule I have established in my Yeshivah and in the different Sem’s I teach in. Many of those who come from abroad and want to get married in Israel find it quite hard to limit themselves to the few “high standart” kashruyot halls that we have in Jerusalem. Many want a better looking hall, so they look for Hotels or other options that fit to their needs. An option that I usually promote is to take a hall in which you can bring in your own caterer (usually under the Eida Haredis) but it’s yet not sufficiant; the Eida sends a Mashgiah which is responsible only on the equipement brought, no more. Once the food arrives to destination they take absolutely no responsibilty of what is happening to it until it is served. More than once I witnessed the doings of waiters or kitchen workers that were fiddling around with the food meant to be served to the guests expecting blindly to receive a Badaz Eida Heradis meal (as presented on the menu). Little did they know that the chicken was cooked in a not Eida oven, due to the pressure to serve the food on time. The kitchen workers decided to speed up the process by cooking part of the non-cooked chicken (sent raw by the caterer and ment to be cooked in the oven they sent) in their own ovens; that the rice was decorated by the workers with non checked greens; and that the meat served was sprinkled with wine poured by arab waiters, etc…. in other words what you eat is not what you ordered!
Since so, I decided to institute a rule in Yeshiva, that whoever wants to go this way must bring from outside an extra Mashgiah responsible over the happenings in the kitchen from the moment the food arrives to the hall until the last dish is served.