Reception food: dinner vs heavy appetizers

If it's during dinner, you should serve dinner.

You could do pasta stations, a potato bar and a carving station. Maybe that's more like a buffet? I honestly don't understand what the difference is between stations and a buffet. HaHa! Sorry I am not more help.

Is there any cultural food you can incorporate? We're having jerk chicken among our selections. Does your venue not provide food?

If you put out the effort of searching and put up the payment necessary, "traditional wedding food" doesn't have to be *yawn*. You can get really interesting, delicious dishes from a caterer.

Every venue we've looked at has several food options and are willing to prepare something off the usual menu. Talk to your venue and see what they offer.

You can serve enough in a station and passed hors d'oeuvres format. It is really a style issue

I think if there is enough food to substitute a full meal, then you can pull off a cocktail style reception. You'll want a combo of stations and passed apps, and a variety of different things

I suppose I do want to stay relatively on the cheaper side. Does anyone know if there is a price difference between dinner/food stations/heavy apps?

We're beer and taco people so we're going with the taco bar with a variety of meat options and lots of toppings, with homemade guacamole and salsas

Mia, so these are all different dinner options. I've heard that heavy apps at dinner time are generally more expensive because you provide a variety. I am not sure on food stations v. buffet v. plated. Do you have a venue already?

Also, Stacy, homemade as in a caterer is making it or are you bringing it in?

One thing to keep in mind is that in some areas heavy apps ends up being more expensive than a plated or buffet meal because caterers often have to spend more time making the bit-size apps.

My FH has a competition BBQ team, and his team wanted to prepare the meats for our reception. To get away from the full traditional BBQ dinner, our coordinator recommended a mashed potato station, styled non-traditional slaws, amped up beans, etc. At first I wasn't thrilled with the main course but now I'm much more excited about the sides.

We are doing stations - but heavy stations and people will be released like a buffet because we are having a large wedding (250) and I want everyone to have a seat at regular round tables-- i like the options better this way. We are having a pasta station, carving station, mashed potato station, smoked salmon, taco station and many others. We are also having passed appetizers and stationed apps as well during cocktail hour. It will be a full meal.

We will have a caterer... I do like the idea of BBQ with a twist on the sides, thanks!

And Stephanie, your reception food sounds bomb!

Stations and hors will never be cheaper

And Stephanie? You're doing a buffet.....

Yep - hors are always expensive!

Talk to your caterer about pricing option. I was looking at the same thing as you but once I sat down with my caterer she said that since I ran over a meal time that even heavy appetizers might run out and i ended up getting passed appetizers for cocktail hour and a 2 entrée buffet for actually $5 PP cheaper

You could do a pizza bar, pasta bar , build your own burger bar , taco bar, etc.

This is the stations menu at my venue. Add one or two of those will some serious apps and cocktails and I would be happy

We are doing stations as a stylistic choice to please a two main "camps" of eaters: our friends who tend to be adventurous foodies and our families who are mostly basic meat-and-potato types. There will be more than enough food for everyone to leave stuffed. It's not a cheap option at all--the cost is more than double what it would be for a typical plated dinner.

Not sure where you were researching that you only saw tacos. Build your own tacos sounds like a fun Tuesday night with friends, but way too labor intensive and messy and casual for a wedding.