Cookout

Also wondering about this! My fiance and I are thinking something g backyard cookout without being tacky, but not sure what to do!

Look into someone that caters Mexican and American. Maybe you can do fajitas and BBQ.

Cookout as in...hiring people? Or a Cookout as in making every family member a cook?

Don't self cater. Just hire professional caterers

Sure I've heard of this! I've also heard of brides and their families being super stressed, people going to the hospital with food poisoning, people dying of food poisoning, the bride/groom crying because they didn't have liability insurance to pay for people's hospital bills when they get sick or if they burn/cut themselves while cooking, food being burned or forgotten, and the reception essentially ruined because of all of it.

Hire a professional.

Don't do a cook out. Hire people to prepare the food. You can do a mid of bbq and Mexican food.

We would not for one make our families cook. We would hire people ofcourse.

What is "regular food?"

You can hire a fabulous caterer who makes authentic Mexican food and your "regular" food (whatever that means). Just do your research on caterers.

It can work, but get a pro caterer to accomplish it. You could obviously do a taco bar (with steak and/or pork off the grill, nacho appetizers, even grilled mole chicken, rice and beans.

Hire someone that can do a variety of cuisines.

Maybe do food stations where each one has a type of food. (enchalada station, bbq station, ect.)

One cool trend I've seen more of lately is "stations" of catering. So you can do a Mexican food station, and a "regular" food station, whatever that means, plus something else that will be a crowd pleaser. Definitely don't have your family out on a grill cooking, it's way more stress than it's worth and like others have mentioned, can be quite dangerous.

Not sure what "regular" food is, but I'd look into a Mexican/Southwestern caterer.

Don't self cater.

Don't self cater.

Don't self cater.

Don't make you family work on the day of your wedding. If you are going to do this, I would hire someone. You could even see about getting a few different kind of food trucks. You could have one with Mexican food, one with American traditional food and one for some other type of street food. BAM. Done.

Bottoms up ladies and gents! It's going to be a long day!

ETA: to be inclusive. I need coffee with my Baileys.

She's not selfcatering!

I second finding a caterer to do stations. Maybe a pasta station, a Mexican station and a meat carving station?

I'm not Mexican/Hispanic and I'd be fine with Mexican cuisine though

Guys, as a heads up, OP said they'd be hiring people to cook.

So the people who are trying to be rude on here. Sorry i am not properly correct. I was trying to offend anyone. So ok not REGULAR but American. All i was doing was asking for ideas not people to be rude.

I think it's fine to do a backyard BBQ. But do not try to self cater or ask family to do it. Find a restaurant to cater the food. If you want to do a mix of Mexican and traditional bbq, you can probably find two restaurants to cater from.

A few other things to consider with a backyard reception

- weather. What will you do if it rains or is too hot?

- you will probably need to rent a tent, tables, chairs, tablecloths etc

- will there be enough space on a patio, driveway or other solid ground to accommodate all your guests? If it's rainy before the wedding day, the grass could be too muddy and mushy for people to walk in.

- are there addiquit restrooms for the group size?

- clean up

- noise restrictions in the neighborhood and being curious to neighbors

I only bring them up because they are the things that made me decide that using my parents backyard was not going to work for us. I have been to a backyard wedding before and it was great. Very simple and there was not a huge guest list so it worked. Depending on the number of guests and other factors, it might be less stressful and less expensive to have a more traditional venue

@Jay, thanks for saying that. I didn't notice that post at first. Apologies.

@Rachel, I think you should really look into the food trucks. I had a friend that did them and they were a hit!

Stop with rude. It's too early to start drinking....

Look at the thread about backyard weddings. It's on the first page