Catering Conundrum!

I personally think your timeline is good! Of course, it's up to you and FH if you want to extend it

Our caterer does a 5 hour block that we choose. I feel like 3 hours is really short. I mean I guess it really doesn't matter because you will be having fun dancing. The only thing that may be annoying if if they wont leave anything behind (like tablecloths) because then they are going to have to move everything to take them.

5 hours makes a lot more sense for a wedding! We'd only need to request the bartender an hour longer and before the catering team would need to arrive. We are providing the rentals and all leftover food and alcohol we get to keep - they are boxing everything up for us. I think when factoring in cocktail hour and dessert a 3 hour window is cutting it quite sparse to do anything between. And we have passed apps and an action station for dessert! Lol.

Hmm with it being buffet what do they really have to do though? They stand and serve the food. Dinner is merely and hour. Cocktail hour they obviously have to serve apps. I think 3 hours of physical SERVICE is fine, if that's what they mean. But their set up and tear down should be completely separate from that 3 hour window. Who will be serving your dessert or is that mostly self serve?

That part makes sense but he lumped everything including bar service in the 3 hour window. The food makes sense to be completed within 3 hours but he hasn't clarified if set up and break down are part of that and he alluded that their bartender is under the same 3 hour contract. None of which is in my contract! I would've gone with an outside bartender had I known this. And they are providing some of the dessert in an action station and doing cake cutting and plating for us. Which I paid extra for.

I also just looked at the contract again, he did enter in that our wedding will be from 3-8:30 the only difference is I asked for the bartender to be ready by 2:30.

Ughh yeah that would be really annoying because 3 hours for the bar really doesn't seem like enough. I would for sure get clarification! Nobody has a 3 hour bar service because a whole hour of that is cocktail hour! I would for sure clarify and say 3 hours was never in the contract.

So when I worked for a caterer a lot of times we would basically be finished before the wedding is over. We'd clean off the tables after dessert and be out before the final dances. Maybe that's what he or she means when they say they only cover 3 hours of service. If they're including the bar service within that 3 hour service then you'll probably have to purchase more bar time because you'll want the bar open until the end of the night for sure.

You can skip the drinks before the ceremony and, like you said, give out water bottles to guests. You can also move the dessert service up and have people eating dessert while you do the spotlight dances. That would take the food service to being from 4pm to 7pm, which is 3 hours.