If you’re responsible for arranging a wedding, corporate holiday party or other big event, hopefully you’ll have a professional to help guide you through a process that often has a lot of moving parts. If you’re really lucky, you might get to work with someone like Lisa Hopkins.

Hopkins is the director of catering at The Houstonian and was recently selected to be the president of the National Association for Catering and Events (NACE), so she’s an expert in the field. We recently chatted about her professional background —  and got a few catering ideas while we were at it.

What are some of the more unusual requests you’ve received?

~ Occasionally we’ve been asked to prepare a special family recipe for a wedding. The challenge is to make it as good as or better than Grandma does.

~ For our annual Holiday Tree Lighting Festival, we created snow piles on the hotel’s meadow for the children.

~ Animals! We’ve had petting zoos outside for children’s birthday events, talking parrots for a first birthday, puppies for fundraiser auctions, and a live bird display for a gala. And, elephant and horse processionals for Indian wedding celebrations.

What was the biggest or most amazing event you’ve been able to pull off?

We’ve done some amazing weddings here. One of them started with the ceremony in one of our ballrooms, which featured floral-topped carved ice pillars as aisle markers. It was followed by a reception and dinner in our Grande Ballroom with full ice bars, passed hors d’oeuvres and chef-manned food stations. There were also several dinner courses at the table and then a discotheque lounge in the back of the room where the ceremony had taken place with midnight breakfast treats. There were about 300 attendees. The best memory of the night was the father of the bride, without his coat and tie, dancing down the hallway with a full band of mariachis!

The biggest event we’ve done here since I’ve been around was in 1999 for a conference group that used the entire hotel. We fed 750 people six seated meals and then did a formal black-tie dinner for 900 – all in a 12,000-square-foot tent on our front grounds, with a separate tent for the culinary team. The conference had 10 heads of state in attendance.

If you could organize any event you wanted at The Houstonian, what would it be?

I’d love to do a royal dinner for Queen Elizabeth II of England, her family and 300 of her closest friends.

What is NACE?

NACE is the National Association for Catering and Events. We have nearly 4,000 members across the United States. The organization is committed to helping catering and event professionals with industry education, connecting with other professionals locally to create awareness in their communities, and creating an endowment for the future with scholarships through our foundation.

Please give one piece of advice to our readers who may be considering having an event.

Hire credible people whom you trust, who are referred by people you trust. Use professionals who are genuinely interested in your priorities and vision. They should also have experience in what you want to achieve so they can guide you to the best options.

If you want to look into having your own grand function at The Houstonian, call the catering office at 713-812-6932 or email sales2012@houstonian.com.