Budget Reception Options?

We are having our ceremony in a beautiful park and the the reception at an upscale restaurant with a private room. We are doing Appitizers such as grilled cheese and basil tomato soup, buffalo ble cheese chicken sliders, meat board, veggie board, Mahi Mahi sliders and 3cheese fried Ravioli. Tea, Coffee ,an Ice Tea. cake table. Our guest are paying for their own alcoholic beverages. All this is about $550. We are doing a selfie station. Play list music ITunes. Hopefully you can find something like this in your area.

We are having a nice dinner with no dancing or normal events. A restaurant would be a perfect space to cut costs but you'd still want to pick up the tab. I had a restaurant quote me $65 a person which sounded great compared to some places being $200 a person


Other ways to save....

-no dancing means no DJ. You could get away with an ipod. - have no bridal party... could save tons-keep the guest list very small. - try to find a restaurant that only charges per head with no additional fees..some charge for the room, others do not. - no normal wedding events such as a bouquet toss, they charge roughly $65 for a throw away bouquet! - you don't need favors-technically you don't need engagement photos for save the dates even!

Yeah it can definitely be a little off-putting to ask people to pay their own bill so what I would suggest and it could actually be really cost-effective is maybe just a rent a shelter at the park or at someone's place or if you can rent a friend's Clubhouse and maybe a gated community or apartment just have a reception with party trays. One of my friends just got married and her and her husband didn't have a lot of money to spend either and she still owns a villa which she can rent a clubhouse for $200 and she just basically went to a local grocery store and have them do a bunch of party trays with fruits, vegetables and chicken tenders. Honestly at first I thought it was going to be a little unclassy or maybe I can't think of a better word but it actually turned out being nice and I was well-fed. At one point we were considering doing a small wedding with a post reception and same thing we didn't want to spend a lot of money so another idea is to maybe have the ceremony reception before dinner time and if in your invitations you let people know light reception to follow then they know to not come with full appetites. Also pending on where you do it you can really just buy some wine and some beer if you're allowed to serve liquor., do a little bit of research but there are blogs out there by Brides that have done small budget weddings and made them look really nice. Anyone that truly cares about you is there to see you commit to your future husband and not be there solely for the reception.

It’s still not appropriate to ask guests to pay. But here are a few options: 1) host a dinner or bunch at a restaurant but cut your guest list to a size you can afford, 2) have your wedding at a non-meal time like 2 pm and host a simple cake & punch reception at a temple/church hall, community center, or even your home if a small guest list.

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Yes, this. It's not appropriate to have people pay for themselves, but you can alter your plans to make the reception more affordable.

We did catered bbq - upgraded to ribs - and it ran us about $20pp. They came to our rented beach pavilion, set up, served, and cleaned up. It was so easy, and there was plenty of room for people to mingle under the pavilion. Can you swing something like that? They also had a delivery only option where they set up & leave. Asking people to pay just isn’t right. If you want, you can do just a cake & punch reception at a non-meal time. That would be far less expensive than traditional catering but not put the cost on your guests.

Yeah it's still not appropriate to ask guests to pay for themselves. We had our wedding reception at a restaurant after having the ceremony in a free space (our church). We only spent $700 on food and an additional $150 or so on the cakes. Our entire budget was under $1,500 due to a family emergency making us cancel our original plans.

My advice: chose somewhere that needs no decoration. Keep things very simple. Keep your guest count low. Most restaurants aren't going to want you to do anything over like 15 people that doesn't have a set menu anyway.

You can also rent a shelter at that park and do catering from a restaurant. Olive Garden, Chipotle, and Panera all do catering that will keep your cost down to less than $15/ person.