Food

Hi, and welcome!

You'll find that most of us on these forums do NOT recommend catering your own wedding. It is too stressful, too distracting, and often can run into problems with food safety.

You'd still need to hire servers, and chafing dishes, as well as all the other things that go along with serving food.

Hiring a caterer can seem expensive, but they usually wrap most of these things up into one price, plus take care of all the food safety and other concerns. Take a look at the "vendors" tab, above, and see who you can find in your area!

Definitely do not do your own catering or have family/friends work in the kitchen during the ceremony since they won't be able to enjoy the ceremony or reception. Many caterers will provide inexpensive food and work within your budget and wishes. If they don't, move on until you find someone who does. Another option is to have your favorite restaurant cater to save money. Many provide full service options with staff to serve so your guests can enjoy themselves.

What types of foods do you and the majority of your guests like? You can serve anything really.

Agree with PPs, I would never recommend self catering. Not only is it a ton of added stress on an already stressful day, but it's also not your friends or family's responsibility to work on your wedding day. Not to mention, it's a huge liability and I'm doubtful that you carry the proper insurance to handle guest's medical bills if they get food poisoning.

I Would Say Book A Caterer To Avoid The Stress Of Catering Your Own Food. It Might Be Costly But It Is Worth It.

Agreeing with PP's. Self catering could be stressful and disastrous. I highly recommend hiring a caterer, or looking into local restaurant that offer drop off catering.

We had these concerns as well, but in the end decided to pick a venue that included the catering so that we wouldn't have to worry about who and how much. So many details go into needing to rent each fork and napkin and piece of this and that, plus tax, delivery, clean up, tear down, etc. I know it sounds like a lot of money when you break down each part of it, so we decided to just bypass putting this altogether ourselves, and have our venue handle it. If your venue offers catering, I think that's always a good choice.

I got lucky. We are having a local restaurant "cater" but it will be buffet style. The owner sends his employees over to manage the food area and make sure it doesn't become chaos. And it's super affordable.

That is one of the most economical ideas I've heard of besides skipping a full meal and serving desserts only. Restaurant food is generally better than alot of catering anyway, and you already know ahead that you like it.

I was shocked at how low the quote was, which is also partially because he's just a great guy. Most people in our city love him and his food too :-)

Glad I could help! I hope it works out. They'd probably be grateful for the business right now.

Definitely hire someone! Reach out to local businesses, many of them probably already offer catering but I'm sure they'd appreciate any extra business right now.

We did a Brunch wedding- so it really only works if it's a morning wedding (ours starts at 11am). But we are SO excited for it, we love Brunch.