CATERING

CATERING & BAR

CATERING 101

You don’t want to procrastinate finding a wedding caterer, but you shouldn’t attempt to book one until you’ve come up with a rough guest count, booked a venue, set a date, and have decided on a general budget for food. Once you’ve checked those boxes, use this section, blissbridalmagazine.com, Google, and social media, to start your research!

A full-service wedding caterer does more than just serve tasty food. They don’t just cook; they also handle your plates, silverware, drinkware, provide the waitstaff (and often bartenders), serve the food on time, clean up the dining area and kitchen, pack up leftovers, and take away the garbage. When you’re calculating the price of traditional catering versus less traditional options, make sure you remember that a wedding caterer’s bill includes many things that you’ll have to pay for on your own if you go the DIY route.

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SEATED MEAL: This is thought of as the most traditional wedding option, and it can also be the most expensive. While suited waiters bring a certain charm to your event, they also come with additional costs.

FAMILY-STYLE MEAL: The family-style meal involves large platters of food served to each table and passed around, just like you would do at a holiday dinner. This is often cheaper than a meal served by waiters, but it can be more expensive than a buffet. You’ll still need a decent number of servers to make this happen, and you’ll need more food.

BUFFET MEAL: This can be the most affordable service option for serving a full meal. You still need a buffet to be staffed—someone needs to tidy it up and refresh the food as it runs out—but your staff-to-guests ratio is much lower. With that said, your food costs could be higher (because nobody likes an empty-looking buffet), so talk to your wedding caterer to figure out what service option will ultimately be the most cost-effective. If your wedding is large, make sure you have a good plan for crowd control. You’ll generally need one buffet line minimum per one hundred people. BRUNCH OR LUNCH: Although morning weddings can be cost-effective in various ways, the lunch or brunch meal doesn’t always save you the fortune that is sometimes promised. Lunch lets you skip the fancy dinner with fewer people noticing, and it will definitely lower your alcohol bill. But the food alone won’t tend to save you enough to justify moving your wedding to earlier in the day.

HEAVY APPETIZERS/COCKTAIL HOUR: Here, you skip the expensive main courses, skip the pricey servers, and go hog wild on what are essentially snacks. Just make sure you have enough food to really fill people up (particularly if you’re also going to booze them up) and let the mixing and mingling begin!

MIDNIGHT SNACK: After a few hours of dancing and a few drinks- not only will your guests get the munchies, but its time to help them sober up before heading home! Keep the party going with a midnight snack! Sliders, fries, grilled cheese, chicken and waffles or other small finger foods. You can even consider bringing in a food truck!

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