nyc Restaurant Catering vs Caterer

We didn't do this, but I briefly toyed with the idea.

In the end, we felt that the cost of catering, plus a venue, plus tables/chairs/linens/settings, plus servers, PLUS coordinating all of that... would not equal the savings we wanted it to... in time or money. Our guest list was only a bit bigger than yours, as well.

You might find this to be different, but, given the amount of venues in NYC, full service ended up being the best deal for us.

Congrats and good luck!

View Quoted Comment Thanks so much for your input Rebecca!

Welcome to the community Lizz!!

You certainly have a lot to think about!! Do you know what type of food you would like to serve at your wedding? You could definitely look into the New York City Wedding Caterers that are listed in the vendor search to get an accurate price for the type of food you would like to serve.

Since you are so enthused about having your wedding run as smoothly as possible, have you considered hiring a planner for your day to keep everything running to schedule?

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Hi there! Similarly like yourself and Rebecca, we toyed with the idea of having our wedding in Brooklyn as well. Our wedding was for ~100 guests.

In our search we quickly realized a few things; We didn't like banquet halls, or those types of places, instead a more industrial type of space. Echoing Rebecca the whole catering/alcohol/rentals is a lot to coordinate.

We glanced at a few venues including The Green Building, Liberty Warehouse, Brooklyn Winery, 501 Union, etc. etc. etc. These all include really hefty prices for what they have.

Unfortunately for us, we found NYC to be too pricey for what we wanted. Aside from the aforementioned places, we also looked at tons of other spots as we went through the process, mostly looking at bars (that we could have outside food brought in), and restaurants. That list consisted of Marcy North, Battery Harris, Frankies, and a bunch of Splacer locations. (https://www.splacer.co/splaces/search?activity_category=Reception&address=Brooklyn,%20NY,%20USA&activity=Wedding%20Reception&lat=40.6781784&lng=-73.9441579&sort_by=popularity)

In the end, we picked one of our favorite restaurants that had really great structure, layout, ambiance, and overall vibe. The food, drink, service were immaculate. Our package also came with a wedding coordinator who was truly the best ever. When you don't have to think about the logistics you can focus on everything else. We are both designers so love to design and plan. The best part is that we were able to not think about all those other things and really focus on what our menu was going to be (we got to customize the entire thing, our wedding was brunch themed), we had a couple custom drinks, they have a great mixologist and made 4 others just for us. With that said, our wedding took place in Good Luck Restaurant, West New York (where my husband's from and his whole side of the family lives).

Planning a wedding is very exciting and making it custom to you and your future partner is what really makes it special. For us, it meant the in between moments, being able to take the model of a wedding, flipped it on its head, changed the timing, the sequence of events, and made it one seamless party that happened to have a wedding.

Good luck and hope you find the right spot for your celebration!

View Quoted Comment Thanks so much for your input Jeanelle! This is very helpful! Your pictures are beautiful! Yes, you mentioned a lot of the venues we’re considering + Greenpoint Loft, 26 Bridge, etc.! I definitely agree that their rental fees on top of catering and all other costs makes for a very costly wedding! We both grew up in NYC and most of our friends and family live here so we’re hoping to be able to host our wedding at a (non-traditional) NYC venue. We also really want to host a Saturday night wedding that goes on until late, so I wouldn’t want our guests to have to drive afterwards. Again, still weighing in costs and tweaking our guest list and budget to see if it’s possible! If we could afford a caterer, I would definitely prefer that over ordering food from a restaurant and hiring a staffing company.

Hi! I don't know if you've figured out the catering piece but figured I would offer my recommendation. We had to plan multiple weddings and the NY one is all on us. So we were looking for as cheap as possible. Our wedding is in March 2020 but we our budget for 80 people is coming in around 15-16k. We chose The Greenpoint Loft when they offered a discount on 2020 rates back in November and we are having our wedding on a Thursday since it's the cheaper weekday rate but close enough to the weekend so it's won't be an inconvenience for most people. The catering piece was the trickiest part. We ended finding a fantastic company: John Claude Exclusive Catering based in North Arlington, NJ (pretty much right over the bridge). They have 3 reception/event menus (19.95/person, 29.95/person, and 39.95/person). This includes 4 passed hds, 1 salad, 2 pasta options, 3 protein choices, and 2 sides. The 2 more expensive options have desserts as well. We are mixing and matching between the first and second option since the first option doesn't include a beef protein and that's a must for my fiance. The thing that sealed the deal for me was the customer service. I have never waited more than an hour for a response. My phone calls have always been answered, they have creative ideas for dessert displays, and they understand that couples on a budget still deserve good food. We went for the tasting and my fiance and I loved everything and we aren't the easiest to please. They also have serving staff, bartenders, and can provide non alcoholic beverages. We are going to use all those services and purchase alcohol from a discount warehouse and have the bartender serve it. If you are still looking for rental companies our coordinator recommended Broadway Party Rental. She was worked with them a lot and said they tend to have the best prices for rentals. If you are still looking at venues, I believe all the BK Venue spaces (The Greenpoint Loft Parent company) include tables and chairs in the rental price. That will save several hundred dollars. Good Luck.

View Quoted Comment Malika—thank you sooo much for your help!! I greatly appreciate it!!! My fiance and I took a little break from wedding planning to deal with things at work, but are now back on it! We just so happened to have scheduled three visits to Brooklyn venues this week—one of them being the Greenpoint Loft! So this comment came at such a perfect time. I emailed several caterers for quotes back in October and the most affordable one came in at about $70pp without tax (or drinks/alcohol), but including staff. I am definitely going to check out John Claude. This puts me more at ease when considering these DIY/industrial BK venues. I wish you the best for your wedding and hope to see some pictures on the forum! 😊 Any other recommendations along the way are greatly appreciated!

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Lizz - I am happy to hear you took a break. I had to do the same after initially reaching out to vendors. It can be overwhelming and defeating when you receive quotes over your budget. There are good and affordable vendors out there, sometimes it take a bit more work. Other resources we used were thumbtack and bark. We found our DJ on thumbtack. He has 20+ 5 star reviews there. Music and dancing are really important to us but we didn't want to spend thousands on a specialty DJ. We had a 45 minute chat with the DJ and I'm confident he's going to do exactly what I want, create a dance party. We are sourcing the baker for the cake from there as well. We are only get a small 2 tier because we are doing a dessert table. My fiance is Turkish and we contacted a Turkish bakery in Brooklyn who gave him a good price and will deliver to the venue on the day of. Between the cake and desserts we are spending less than a traditional baker would charge for a wedding cake. The most affordable florist we found was on thumbtack as well. I've decided to create my own floral arrangement after I did a mock-up of the arrangements and realized how cheap and easy it was. Purchasing the flowers and supplies was less than half of the cheapest quote I received. Bonus I would it's going to be exactly what I want since I've done it before. We will have the flowers delivered 2 days before the wedding and will prep that day and assemble one style of arrangement that day, the other will be done onsite by the coordinator on the day of. If you don't want anything too complicated I encourage looking into doing the flowers yourself. I am ordering from Flower Moxie. Fabulous floral had cheaper prices but I like the customer service and resources available of Flower Moxie. They gave me the exact number of stems needed per arrangement based on my feedback and pinterest board. I read good things about Sam's Club flowers. If you are ordering in flowers in bulk I they will be cheaper and fifty flowers as well. I've spent so much time researching the cheaper alternative to everything I could start coordinating all the more affordable weddings. lol

Malika

View Quoted Comment All such great advice!! Thanks so much! Yes, once we lock in the venue, we’ll go full force on getting affordable quotes for the big ticket items. Definitely considered DIY florals as well! 😊😊