Shower - self catering

I have never been to a catered shower in my life. The food has always been made at the shower before everyone shows up. Heck, I have done it myself 3 times and mine was lovingly done by my BP and it was amazing.

It's still not okay. Half of these comments are giving bad advice. I have contacted food poisoning a couple times from family and neighborhood parties, and do I really need to bring up the chocolate cat hair cake I bit into made by my old neighbor again? Of course I'm going to worry about someone's cat walking on the kitchen counters. I won't eat in someone's home if I know their cat is allowed on them. I got sick from my own bridal semi self catered shower.

It doesn't matter if it's a formal event or not with only 30 guests. You don't want to risk getting even one person sick. At least purchase the prepared food and pick it up.

My family gets professional catering for evvvvvvvverything but Thanksgiving and Christmas. They don't want the extra hassle of hosting a party and also having to cook something. Holidays are different though because who doesn't cook for their own families on holidays (besides the whole "businesses likely aren't open" issue lol).

If an event is larger than 20 people, I'd suggest pro catering for safety reasons as well as simply cutting yourself some slack with one less (huge) thing to worry about. Although I don't see anything wrong with events like these being self-catered if it's from a person I trust making the food. I am one of those that will not eat your food if I do not know your hygiene habits or if I remember stories about your cat jumping up on counters, etc.

I've never been to a shower that wasn't self catered. I see no problem with it. I love homemade food and I'd much rather have it than a caterer at a shower. I'm sure that whoever you host for will be grateful for all the effort and energy you put in.

I've never been to a shower that wasn't self-catered. They've all been pretty small and at the host's home, and I probably would have thought it was weird if they would have gone to the trouble of getting it catered for something so informal.