From the moment the engagement ring was slipped onto your finger, we bet your head hasn’t stopped spinning with all the things you need to organise.
Who to invite, what to wear, where to hold the ceremony, the engagement party, the honeymoon, securing a celebrant or minister… the list is pretty much endless.
Wedding breakfast or formal dinner?
And then there’s the refreshments. Will you have a sit-down dinner or a buffet? Should you provide canapes and snacks to mop up all of the champagne later in the day? It’s no wonder couples get overwhelmed by choice and end up making costly mistakes.
The truth is, you’ll be guided by your budget for much of your wedding, so unless you have a limitless fund it’s sensible to divide the budget into chunks for venue hire, wedding attire, refreshments and so on.
When you’re choosing a caterer, it’s useful to have an idea of what you want to eat and how formal you want proceedings to be. Remember, your guests won’t mind at all – they’ll just be grateful to be fed good food in excellent, relaxed company.
Choices, choices
Caterers can pretty much do whatever you want and they will have no end of ideas to inspire you. If you don’t have at least an outline plan, you may end up more confused than ever just trying to decide how you’ll feed your guests and choose a menu.
We recommend that you and your loved one sit down over dinner and drinks and take time to work out a plan of how you want the day to go. That includes what time you’ll have the wedding ceremony, whether or not you’ll incorporate a break before the reception and what entertainment you’ll provide for your guests in between the ceremony and the party.
A full guest is a happy guest
Some couples leave a couple of hours after the ceremony and the reception, others organise theirs so the nuptials blend seamlessly into a champagne reception and wedding breakfast. There’s no hard and fast rules, but your guests won’t want to be hanging around all dressed up and nowhere to go. It’s also not a great idea to provide lots of alcohol and no food, even if it’s light snacks – they’ll need something to line their stomachs.
Ask yourselves whether you want a three-course meal, a finger buffet or if you’re going off the beaten track a little, a food truck. Relaxed, snack style wedding food has grown in popularity in recent years along with cocktail bars and more ‘boho’ style refreshments. If you want gourmet burgers and mojitos, then there’s no reason on earth why you can’t. It’s your day, after all.
If your venue has an in-house caterer this can take a lot of the organisational hassle out of the equation, as long as you’re happy with what they have to offer.
Ask friends and family for recommendations and be prepared to do your research. In this case, as research involves plenty of eating delicious food, we think this is one of the nicer elements of planning the wedding.