Sorry to be nosy, but we are planning on making our own wedding food and was wondering about how much it costs. In your answer, can you tell how many guests you had and approximately what you served? Thanks!
Thanks for the first answer below, but is that you making your own food? We are going to have our families help make the food and might go to a Sam’s Club and buy food in bulk.
Our is costing about $1800. It was cheapest I could find, since we are on a small budget. It’ll be for about 100 guests. I’m in So Cal by the way, so things are expensive here. But they will be serving roast beef (with a carver on hand), chicken (which is fabulous!), potatoes, salad, bread sticks, chips & salsa, and also a fruit and cheese spread for the cocktail hour. I might even be forgetting a side dish. I think I’m getting a pretty good deal.
It ends up being around $11 per person for dinner plus the cost of the fruit and cheese, then you also have to add tax and labor, etc. Hope that helps.
We considered doing this but in the end it worked out cheaper to hire caterers who would come to the hall where we’re having the reception.
We’re having a more formal fork buffet for the day guests which is costing £9.00 per head much less expensive than a sit down meal at a hotel etc…
Then in the evening we’re having a help yourself buffet – which is costing £6.50 per person – although we dont have definate numbers so dont know the exact cost as yet.
The price includes staff to serve the fork buffet and to lay out the finger buffet later in the evening and all cutlery. It may work out a few hundred pounds more expensive but we have lots of things to think about and stress us out and dont have the amount of space to store a buffet for possibly over a hundrerd people nor the time to prepare it fresh on the day.
Good luck whatever you decide x
For twenty people and about 1,800.00…..(home buffet reception)
fresh fruit platter
cheese platter
chips, pretzels & dips
fresh veggie platter
hard rolls & sliced seedless rye bread
meat platter (roast beef, turkey, chicken, ham)
cheese platter (for sandwiches) swiss, american,munster, provolone
condiment tray (sliced pickles,lettuce, onions,tomatoes, tubs of butter,mayo, mustard, ketchup)
home made cole slaw (me)
home made macaroni salad (me)
home made potato salad (me)
tossed garden salad with assorted dressings & croutons, bacon bits
deviled egg platter
Three tier carrot cake with real cream cheese icing (my daughter-the two bottom layers contained pinapple, walnuts and raisens, the top tier was plain carrot cake)
italian mini pastry & cookie platter
Assorted sodas and juices, coffee & tea, creamers & sugar/sweeteners.
Champagne for the toast.
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Party store supplies -very nice & color co-ordinated plates, bowls, hot & cold cups, eating utensils, serving bowls, trays, serving platters, napkins and yes, even champagne flutes!
yeah, Hon, I did it all on my own…the platters were ordered from the local grocery store’s deli/bakery…the chips , and drinks came from the store..the dips & salads I made..my daughter learned to decorate cakes in my bakery so she made it as a gift to us & the italian pastries were from a friend’s italian bakery. Everything that could be done a day ahead was and the flowers we used (corsages, button holes and my bouquet, table centerpeice was included in that 1,800.00, along with my outfit from Macy’s, the wedding rings, and the marriage license/judge’s fee for officiating, and a two night stay at our honeymoon hotel…..good luck.
I will start by saying I have an $8000 budget for my wedding so I know where you are coming from.
I was originally going with barbeque for my wedding that will be in October of 2009. It was going to be a friend of the family that does catering on the side. He was going to charge us $10 a head for this. We have no more then 100 guests including the wedding party so it would have come around $1000 for everyone. I think it would cost you around this if you did it yourself…but it could be a little cheaper or a little more expensive. It depends on what kinds of food you are thinking of doing.
I recently found a vendor in the DFW area that charges $9.50 a head. With additional travel fees to get it to the reception location and with gratuity it will end up costing me under $1200 but my guests will be able to choose between 2 different entrees (steak and chicken marsala), 2 sides and a salad plus I get 2 servers at the buffet line during the reception. I found this company through http://www.decidio.com/local-businesses/
I think you should check out both options. If you can make it work and make it cheaper by having family bring food then go for it. You can probably even have a bigger variety of food to choose from and it would be cheaper. However, this is alot of stress for anyone involved with preparing food for your wedding considering food is one of the main things people remember. If it isn’t too much more money to hire someone and their food is awesome, it will be alot less stress on your shoulders. Just a suggestion.
Take care and congratulations on your upcoming wedding!!
We haven’t done it yet, but we have a good idea of cost if we do it ourselves- $750. This is for 250-300 people and would include:
1. Warm turkey or beef sandwiches (and everything that goes with it)
2. Ham
3. Several different salads (pasta, macaroni, lettuce, etc.)
4. Baked beans
5. Potato salad
6. Chips, pickles, other little side things
We have this figure because my mom does a smaller version of this same thing every year for about $250 and his mother just did something similar (maybe a bit smaller, only by about 30-50 guests) for his dad’s 60th Bday for $500.
We plan on most of the salads being from the deli, but you can obviously save money by making those things yourself.