Booking a caterer

1.) quality

2.) price

3.) selection

We really wanted stations, which isn't super common in our area, as opposed to a buffet or plated meal. First we found caterers who offered stations, checked out pricing on their websites or asked for quotes, then scheduled tastings to determine whose food we liked the best.

Our venue is semi all-inclusive so they do their own catering so that was a big factor when we chose them as our venue. We wanted to make sure we were getting really good quality food. If we were hiring separate catering, we would have looked for the same standards. Good quality and good selection (I'm a super picky eater) were important to us.

Our venue only works with 4 caterers so we only had those 4 to choose from which made looking go faster than normal. We began looking in Feb 2018 for a Sept 2019 wedding because the 4 options we had were some of the more known and liked caterers in our area so we wanted to make sure they were open for our date even being a year and a half away at that point. Once meeting with them we looked into like others have said the price and selection. We ended up booking our caterer in April 2018 once we met with them a couple times just to ensure they were everything we were looking for! We also relied heavily on online reviews!

Still shopping caterers. Price is first only because we don't want to cut people if we don't have to. And if we do have to then it will be a small cut. Luckily we have many catering companies that are within our budget.
Overall quality is what it will come down to. Each company is within $10 per person and tastings are complimentary in most cases. I'll have 15 tastings if need be.
Side note. Our first choice in venue was beautiful and for less than 5k we could have had the ceremony, reception, open bar, tablecloths, basic centerpieces, and uplighting. For 125 people! (Saturday day wedding)
Then we tasted the food. Terrible. I wouldn't have paid $3 for a plate of that garbage. Sadly there wasn't another catering option either. We had to walk away.