Wedding Catering – DIY tips
Wedding Catering – where to start
If you think that cost of wedding catering is just ridiculous, you are not alone. There is massive group of people that are crying out for help because they are thrown into this event wedding industry without any prior knowledge or experience and there are so many societal pressure and there is no one helping them out so we decided to create this blog post to navigate you a little bit through this journey that is leading up to the most important day of your life. You are not alone if your budget is small or you don’t want to spend a lot of money or your are just trying it figured it out on your own and need a little bit of directions we are here for you.
In this post you will learn:
– 7 questions you need to ask yourself before proceeding with DYI wedding catering
– Pros and cons of DYI wedding catering
– Top tips on how to make it happen
DYI wedding catering
Let’s be honest it’s a Nobel plan and if executed correctly and thoughtfully it’s actually possible. But first things first. DYI wedding will never be the same as if wedding catering service provided by a professional. Nothing is going to replicate an actual wedding catering service. Hiring an experienced wedding caterer on your wedding day is the best idea but it’s totally understandable if you simply don’t have a budget to do so. Not everyone has a finances to hire a full blown, all inclusive wedding catering package.
Over the last few years we have been in wedding catering industry we have seen many people DYI certain elements of their catering and we have seen what’s really effective and what has turned out to be a complete disaster. So let’s talk about the issues and pitfalls that you can face along the way of DYIng your wedding catering and how to successfully pull this off.
Ask yourself those questions before you decide DYI any of the catering aspects on your wedding day:
1. Who is going to make it?
2. Who is setting it up?
3. Who is making sure that it stays at the correct temperature (food safety etc)?
4. Who is serving it?
5. What is it going to served on and what utensils is going to be used?
6. Who is cleaning it out during the wedding and at the end?
7. How to calculate the amount of food needed?
Those are the things that any caterer will handle for you so you wouldn’t have to worry about anything. You don’t even have to question them as it comes as a standard for any decent wedding caterer.
Let’s come back to 7 important questions:
1. Who is going to make it?
It all differs from your level of cooking skills, time you want to put into this and how hand on you want to be. I get that you are great cook, but have you ever prepared a meal for more than 20 people? Do you have all the equipment needed? Great if yes. Remember that all the food needs to be made 2 days in advance as you don’t want to be in the kitchen until 2am the night before your wedding day perfecting your mash potatoes. If your are planning the menus please think of the foods that keep well in the fridge and simply need to be reheated or tossed together really quickly. You and or your partner don’t want to be in the kitchen cooking the day before your wedding. At this point and time you will have so many friends and family and relatives that are in town for your wedding day and you may not see them very often so you want to make sure that your time is devoted to getting ready for one of the most emotional day of your life not slaving over hot oven.
There are 3 options of who prepares your wedding catering:
– You and your partner
– You ask your guests to bring one dish each (make sure that you ask everyone what the make so you don’t end up with 8 potato dishes and 1 meat dish)
– Your order food from your local off site restaurant and they deliver food to the location of the wedding and your are responsible for setting it up. You need to remember if you decide to go with this option food will probably be delivered on aluminum trays and no serving utensils or plates for your guests will be provided
2. Who is setting it up?
You need someone else apart from yourself in a wedding dress to put the food out on the tables. Which is also a reminder that you need to have tables ready and set up. I promise you, you won’t be able to do it yourself. It takes at least 2 hours to set up tables and chairs … 2 hours that you don’t have to spare on you wedding day.
Of course if your hire a professional wedding caterer they will take care of that for you but as everything it comes with a price tag.
3. Who is making sure that it stays at the correct temperature (food safety)
If you are planning to serve hot food we would strongly advise to either rent or buy chaffing dishes. If your are planning to serve food that needs to remain warm to be food safe or just enjoyable this is your go to option. Again, if you go with professional wedding caterer they will provide all of that for you so you wouldn’t have to worry about any of that.
4. Who is serving it?
With the self serve buffet style we often see that people tent to take a lot more then if there is at least 1/2 servers supervising (controlling portions sizes). I know it sounds absolutely ridiculous but it is actually very true. If the buffet station is not monitored or being watched there is a higher likelihood that you are going to go through food a little bit more quickly because people are just going to keep piling it on. I’m not saying you have to hire a staff although I do think it’s in your best interests to hire couple of servers to help with some of those details so you just don’t have to worry about it.
With the buffet style food you need to add 15/20% extra food for people that will keep scooping onto their plates without even thinking about it.
If you are planning to serve sit down dinner we would strongly advise you to get proper amount of servers. There is not a chance that 2 people are able to serve 100 guests unless you don’t mind that there will be an hour wait for some of guests.
5. What is it going to served on and what utensils is going to be used?
Most of the time people use chafing dishes to serve hot food if it’s a buffet style hot food.
In terms of buffet style food you would also need serving utensils. Think of how the food is going to travel from the platters/ bowls onto your guests plate.
If you decide to DYI your wedding catering you will also need plates and cutlery for all of your guests. There are several companies that rent them so browse online to compare the prices.
Flatware, glassware etc – you need to think how are people receiving their food, how they are putting it in their mouths, how many napkins you need to have, how many spare utensils you need to have and it definitely starts to add up. In terms of quantities you need to think how many times people are eating. And add an extra 30% buffer in the top of that to calculate the numbers.
6. Who is cleaning it out during the wedding and at the end?
If you are renting anything you need to know who is going to clean it and return it.
Don’t tell me your family and friends are going to do it because they don’t expect to. They just don’t think about it. It’s not like they don’t have manners or they are not nice people or they don’t clean after themselves. At the event people tend to switch off that part and say: “I’m here to enjoy myself and to have fun”. People will not help unless they are asked and you don’t want to ask your guests to do so. It normally takes up to 2h for 3 people to clean after the 100 people event. Plan ahead who is going to do it for you. Also, remember about garage disposal. Professional wedding caterer will take care of all of that for you.
7. How to calculate the amount of food needed?
It’s actually very hard thing to do especially if you have never done this before. It’s our job to know how to do the calculations so we are obviously not going to tell you all of our secrets but think of few factors: length of the event (different amount of food for 3h event compering to 6h event), time of the day (people tend to eat more in the afternoon) amount of children etc. An experienced wedding caterer will know all those things like the back of their hand so you also pay for that knowledge and experience. All we want to say is you need to make sure that there is enough food. Nobody wants their guests to leave their wedding hungry.
PROS and CONS of DYI wedding catering
There are definitely some pros in doing DYI wedding catering. It can be extremely fun and extremely rewarding especially when you enjoy cooking. It can be such a special way of loving on your wedding guests and in a way it’s extremely tangible. You can also make it super cost effective as well, as long as you do your planning right and you have your whole system ready to go, you know who is driving it for you, how it’s getting reheated etc. You can really get crafty with this and get you wedding catering cost down to what is much more affordable for you are your family rather than hiring all inclusive wedding catering company. And lastly it’s fully customizable, often when you are working with wedding caterers they have set menu to pick from and it can cost a lot to break outside of that menu. They may be able to make little tweaks here and there for a small additional fee but if you want something different be prepared to pull out your check book because it can potentially be a large cost. This way you can make something that you and your partner absolutely love, it’s important to you, it’s important to your couture and you have much more flexibility. If you are hard working person with great planning skills it’s definitely for you.
Cons – it is WORK, WORK, WORK!!!
So much work. I don’t know if you ever prepared Christmas Dinner for more than 10 people or holiday meal for large group of people but we have, and we like cooking and it takes good organizing skills, planning skills, budgeting skills etc to succeed. It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to na stressful, it’s going to be more time sensitive because you are working with perishable ingredients so it needs to be done pretty close to your wedding day. And all of that just moments before you get married. If you are not careful and creative with how you spending your money the cost could potentially add up to be more than you wanted to be. Just because you are DYI – ing it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be cheap.
If you are not great cook and it doesn’t bring you joy we would advise to at least get food that will be delivered by local restaurant or catering company and you can take care of the rest. If you think you can cook for 80 people but you have never done it before we would suggest to step back and think that through.
Top tips on DYI wedding catering:
1. Keep it simple! Do not go over the top unless you are professional chef
2. Think through the food journey (you have an answer to all 7 questions)
3. Cook ahead
4. Make sure you have enough fridge storage
5. Make sure your venue have prep space and enough ovens to reheat the food
6. Make a timeline of the whole process ( from grocery to service at your wedding)
7. Ask for help – this is not the time to fly solo
8. Have a plan for left-overs
