Vendor meals necessary with a buffet?

You should ask you venue/caterer how they work vendor meals. They will be able to tell you how they usually do it.

My planner originally suggested the method I mentioned above. I think my caterer typically provides sandwiches for vendors. So now I don't know which way is better.

If it was an option, I think the vendors would prefer the buffet over sandwiches. But what happens if you have no no-shows...you can't hope someone doesn't come to feed your vendors. You have to account for them no matter what to get a meal.

Why would your parents be upset about left overs? That seems very odd. Are you self-catering?

Thanks for your responses! As I recall, buffets usually have more food than needed. Something like 7-10% extra? Also, a lot of our guests are of the calorie-counting variety, so I think they would be likely to eat less than expected. Then again, with a buffet, people tend to get more than they can eat, and the yummier dishes tend to run out first.

My mom's attitude is so extreme that she would rather we run out of food than have a lot of leftovers. But I guess I didn't consider the fact that vendors eat later, and so they could actually be left with nothing.

My caterer asked that I include the vendors in the final headcount. Ask your caterer how to account for your 5 vendors.

I added my vendors to my head count and my Venue charges less for vendor's meals

My caterer apparently charges the same for vendors, for a sandwich. I'll confirm if I understood this correctly.

I think I'm just going to order vendor meals and hope my parents can take the leftovers home. My mom's already planning on bringing those large tin containers for leftovers later and leave them in the car during the wedding...

Feed your vendors a real meal too please. Just count them in your headcount

@me - that's shitty if they are charging the same amount for sandwiches. Either way, feed your vendors what everyone else is eating. They don't want shitty sandwiches when people are eating hot meals. (Especially since you're paying the same price anyways).

No you should add your vendors into your head count. Part of their contract is a meal so that makes them a part of the head count. You do not want to run out of food.

Please include your vendors in your headcount. Five people might not seem like a lot more food, but you don't know how much food people will take. Some people might take bigger helpings, leaving the last few tables with little food. I included my wedding vendors in my headcount (we had a buffet), and we STILL ran out of food (it was delicious and people took big helpings).

ETA: We were able to provide food to the last table because we had extra special food accommodation meals so it saved the day, but still, it's not an ideal situation to run out of food, and that is a very real possibility with buffets and underestimating on the headcount.

Thanks @Rachel for sharing your experience! We're definitely including vendors in our head count now.

Include them in your head count. Don't just assume that you're going to have no shows.

Add them into the count, and let your mom know that most caterers will not release leftover food because of liability issues.

I would include them in the headcount and allow them to eat the buffet meal with everyone else. I always thought vendors went first or were served first so they could eat and get back to work. I'm planning on including my in my buffet headcount. I'd hate to just give them a cold cut sandwich, especially if I was paying the same for both!

1. I doubt you can take leftovers home. For food safety reasons, many vendors state that in their contract. I would check. Ours donated any leftovers to a local shelter and keep it at proper temp and drove it over there.

2. Ask what your buffer is. Ours was 10% so that was 15 extra meals. I only had two vendors that would be eating (our officiant & musicians stayed as guests after the ceremony was done and were counted as such) so I let them be the buffer and caterer said that was fine. If it was more than 2, I would have added them in as we did have 2 No's show up they day off as "Yes"

Celia is 100% right whether we have leftovers or not we can't take them they only thing we can take is the top of the cake

I came back to add what some others have mentioned... I was planning to save leftovers if there were any (there weren't, haha). We had the wedding at our house, so it didn't seem like a big deal for the caterer to pack it up and put it in the fridge. My caterer said (like others here said) they can't save leftovers. She did add that "however, if you/your family/friends start packing stuff up to keep as leftovers, we can't stop that." It might be possible to take leftovers, but a caterer just can't chance the liability of giving leftover food.

I've only been to one buffet wedding and they ran out of food.