After the cost of renting a venue, the second biggest bill for many weddings is the food. And making sure that the food is up to your expectations is a must for a great wedding. Here are five essential tips for getting the most out of your wedding catering.
Set a Budget
If you set a budget for the catering, the caterer knows the limits to work within. Now they know to opt for chicken over beef, local seasonal food over exotic imported foods. The knowledge that there’s a financial constraint results in them shifting the menu mix to make more expensive ingredients the side dish instead of the main course. Or they can recommend traditional options that don’t cost as much as what they were initially going to recommend.
Have a Food Tasting
One way to save money on wedding catering is to have a food tasting before you commit to a menu. You’ll get far more out of your wedding catering if you know you like the options you selected and order just that for the wedding. You’ll certainly spend less than if you aren’t sure of the options and end up ordering the equivalent of two meals for everyone because you don’t know what they’ll like.
Control the Guest List
The cost of the catering depends on several factors. The first is the type of catering you want; buffets cost less than serving people meals restaurant style, while serving plenty of appetizers is cheaper yet again. If you’re set on a particular style of catering at your wedding, the other factor you can control is the number of people eating at the event.
For example, you could drop the people you barely know from the wedding list and not invite family friends who are there more to network and do business than celebrate your big day. If you cut the numbers from 300 to 200, you cut the catering bill by a third.
Shift the Schedule
Holding the reception at 4 PM after an early afternoon wedding allows you to save quite a bit on the catering. Most wedding catering Toronto firms will charge less when the event is early, while venue rental fees may or may not decrease.
Ask about the Combined Services
Determine what you want provided by the caterer and where else you could secure those services. Maybe it is cheaper to hire a bartender and bring in alcohol instead of paying the caterer to provide alcohol. You may want to ask the caterer to make the cake instead of hiring a baker to make one separately. If the caterer is working with the decorator, you could see discounts applied to your total bill. Or the caterer and decorator could provide the rented tables and chairs, reducing the overall bill.
Conclusion
These few tips should allow you to save on your catering bill and get the most out of your catered affair. Make sure you keep those few tips in mind before you even start planning your menu.
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