Love fuels two souls to get married, and it's the food that fuels your guests at your wedding. Thus, at any event or party, we all know that it revolves around the food, the food you will serve to your family and friends can either make or break your special day; hence investing in a good catering company is essential. Moreover, An ideal wedding comes with mouthwatering food on their plates, experiencing quality service, and leaves their stomach happy. Of course, you want to ensure your guests are satisfied with the delicious and flavorful dishes you will serve at your wedding.

Photo by perfectmoment.net.au

How to Save Money on Catering?

With so many things you need to pay for your upcoming wedding, you might think of cutting some expenses. If you plan to reduce your budget for your wedding catering, you should be mindful of maintaining the food quality. Wondering how that works? Well, you’re in for a treat. Here are some tips on how you can save money for your catering.

1.    Research Local Caterers

One of the first things you need to consider when finding a caterer for your wedding is the cost of the catering service and their food packages. To compare prices and the quality of the service, you have to research the best local caterers near your wedding venue. Collating the prices and packages of each and deciding on the right caterer with the best food and service quality at the same time will be friendly to your budget.

2.    Choose an Affordable Package

In selecting the best local caterer, you have to ensure that you consider all the aspects of an ideal caterer, check all the food on their menu, compare the prices, and read all the reviews to have an idea about the caterer. After comparing each local caterer, choosing the most affordable package is a no-brainer. However, it would be best if you balanced it out, getting an affordable package simultaneously with the best quality of food and service. Remember that guests are vital on your wedding day as they witness your union and deserve the best meal, leaving their stomachs happy.

3.    Consider Customization

It is challenging to ensure that the menu served at your wedding offers a wide variety of options for guests with different tastes and dietary restrictions. Therefore, considering customization of the menu for your special day is the best way to ensure everything is well handled. In customizing the menu for your guests, you must select familiar and flavorful dishes you know most guests will like. You have to remove unnecessary add-ons that will add to the catering costs.

4.    Insist on a Food Tasting Session

Usually, caterers want their clients to choose a meal package before the food-tasting session, so there will be no need to prepare foods that are not selected. Food-tasting session is an essential part of the selection process of local caterers. Of course, you wouldn't want to serve tasteless and unappetizing meals for the guests. Furthermore, food tastings give you a real taste of the foods and what to expect on your wedding day, including how the buffet and individual tables will be set up.

5.    Reduce your Guest List

It's not an ideal solution to cut down your guest list if you are planning for a large ceremony. However, the reality is, reducing your guest list is one of the easiest ways to save costs on wedding catering. The more guests you have, the more mouths to feed, and eventually, the more it will cost.

If you're willing to adjust your list of guests, this will significantly affect your catering costs. Consider limiting your guest count to 50-100. With this tip, it will be easy to budget and cut costs since close relatives and friends are only invited.

6.    Consider Elopement Wedding

If trimming the guests is hard, why not consider an elopement wedding? Elopement has many benefits, and one of them is its affordability. In an elopement, typically, the maximum guest you can have is around 30, which means you can save thousands of bucks you can use for other suppliers. Moreover, you will have to ensure that the food you will serve to those guests close to your heart is flavorful with high-quality catering service.

7.    Have a Breakfast Celebration

Although a breakfast celebration is not typical for a wedding, you can still consider this tip since breakfast meals are more affordable and easy to customize. Thus, this would be one of the simplest but most creative ways of a wedding celebration. Furthermore, the breakfast wedding should end before lunchtime, so you and your soon-to-be-spouse can have plenty of time to relax and spend the rest of the day together.

8.    Schedule an Off-Season Wedding

While not all wedding suppliers offer off-season rates, many are still willing to be flexible on pricing during this season. If you schedule your wedding during off-seasons instead of peak seasons, most vendors will tend to lower their prices and offer reasonable discounts. Also, marrying during off-seasons will be easier since all wedding vendors are available on your chosen date.

9.    Ask for Quotations

After selecting the ideal local caterers and considering all the aspects needed, from the meal packages to quality service, it is essential to meet with the caterers themselves; this is to properly discuss the inclusions of the package, what kind of dishes you can customize, asking critical questions, and ensuring that are no extra or hidden charges. Apart from that, you must clarify with the caterers where the wedding venue is and the number of guests you have.

10.                Remove Wedding Bar

Hiring a wedding catering itself is burdensome on your wedding costs, how much more if you will add a wedding bar. The number of beer and wine bottles you need will also depend on the number of guests. Considering the idea of a wedding bar is all fun. However, you must first prioritize the food you will serve your guests. You can add the wedding bar if you have extra money to pay, opening it only before and after the food is served.

11.                Opt for Food Trucks

Catering is a huge part of the wedding day, so it is an excellent place to do something different and put a little spice. If you're a couple who wants to explore and customize your wedding reception, food trucks are a good option. Food trucks are much more affordable than catering services, and it is because catering typically includes rentals of tables and chairs, staffing, and beverage and dessert service. In contrast, food trucks bring their food and the truck itself - only that much. However, you must keep in mind that food trucks set up may only work for outdoor wedding events.

12.                Select Buffet Meals

Instead of plated meals, a buffet meal is an excellent option to cut down costs on catering since this will reduce the cost of staffing. Furthermore, plated meals are typically more expensive because of the attention to detail of plating, teamwork, and coordination needed to ensure that correct meals meet a specific place setting; the Chef creates plated meals instead of setting out trays of food in a buffet line. Apart from being more affordable than plated ones, buffet-style weddings allow guests to have more options for food, especially if you're a picky eater and on a diet.

Photo by perfectmoment.net.au

Serve Your Guest With Delicious Yet Affordable Meal

Weddings have become increasingly focused on guest experience, so serving flavorful food and cold drinks is the best way to make your day memorable as it fuels the guests on your special day. However, this part of the wedding is one of the most costly since it discusses food and beverage. Of course, as much as possible, we want to serve the most flavorful and tasty dishes we can to our guests and, at the same time, can be friendly to our budget.

With so many options, selecting the right caterer that offers quality service and a reasonable price can be overwhelming, so you must take extra care and time to choose a wedding catering vendor. Remember that your guests are not just guests. They are significant persons who witnessed your glorious exchanging of vows.

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BIO: Wedding photography expert Jeffrey Wang has his own wedding photography studio in Sydney Perfect Moment Photography. He helped hundreds of couples to capture their love stories and the raw emotions and spirit behind the weddings. In his free time, he writes about love stories, venues and photography tips for known wedding blogs around the globe.