Staging a mini BBQ competition at a wedding?

Hi all--

I am newbie so please forgive me if I am posting in the wrong place. I was directed to this site by some of your brothers who also post on chowhound.com because I have kind of an odd proposition for all of you competitive teams out on Long Island.

You can see the original chowhound thread and the evolution of this idea here:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/769289

I would like to hire two friendly rival teams and stage a mini-bbq competition as the "catering" portion of my casual backyard bbq wedding on Sept 24 2011 in Long Island. We are counting on 125-150 ppl total and it will be in the evening for a dinner reception. You and your rival would come out with your trucks fired up and show us your best stuff--and if you can do a mean Texas style brisket, the fiance will worship you for the rest of eternity (he would eat brisket three meals a day if I let him). The "judges" will be our guests and they will vote for the winner at the end of the evening. We are also trying to think of what might be a desirable prize for the winning team. I don't know much about what a competitive team would drool over, so any suggestions are welcome. And of course we will supply all the beer you can drink.

In the end, hopefully you will get some fun practice beating out your rival before the next real competition and we will get some amazing world-class BBQ and fixings and a fun wedding experience that the local caterers have not been able to offer us so far (the BBQ is always coming in secondary to the china, linens and decor with these guys--they are just not getting it!! We are not eating BBQ off of fancy china!!!)

I don't know if any teams (and their rivals) would be up for this, but if so please contact me and let me know! Or if i can't get two teams to compete, I will also be thrilled with just one competitive BBQ team catering my wedding!

I AM the bride!!!

And I am totally on board with this. In fact, it was my idea!:-D

Thanks guys!!! You're the best! (I assume most of you are guys--wonder why...)

To clarify, it IS a paying gig, not some kind of sneaky scheme to get free work. Catering a wedding, even a casual one like ours, is no joke, and I totally get that--fiance and I both worked in the food biz ourselves in our younger years. I would be paying both teams their fair rate for catering such an event. But I do hope that even with two competition teams catering one party, it will still be affordable and WAY more fun and the food WAY better than some of these stuffy vendors we've been interviewing so far!

Finally, I did get in touch with Willie and spoke to him today. He was awesome to talk to and I think he will be able to help us make this happen. We will be up at Williepallooza this April to meet him and try out his BBQ. We are also happy to meet any other teams there who might be interested in our Wedding BBQ Battle.

And definitely if you have any other questions but don't necessarily want to post publicly, please get in touch with me at j8a8n8e8t@yahoo.com

Pigs on Fire--those photos are so AMAZING!!! Thanks for sharing!

It is actually our dream to move to the Catskills someday and build a house--we have been scouring properties mostly in the Andes/Bovina area. In fact, my first choice for a wedding venue would have been to buy and fix up a property there in time to have the wedding in our own backyard (with the fiance having built his own smoker), but that didn't happen as quickly as we would have liked with the recession and all.

Luckily a very kind friend offered us the use of his house in L.I. for the event, which is why we are doing it there. But hey, go w/ the flow, right?