Thursday, September 10, 2009

Foods.

Food and drink are proving to be the most challenging part of our wedding to do on a budget. I posted the following on Chowhound, one of my favorite foodie websites:

Hi there,
I'm getting married (in Dumbo) next summer on a tight budget, but food is super important to me. Because I'm on a really tight budget (hoping, perhaps crazily, to spend $1000-1500 on food for 120-150 people), I'm considering throwing a simple cocktail party with hors d'ouerves and cupcakes or cake.
Does anyone have any experience with providing good food on a budget for a large group? Does anyone know of any affordable caterers or restaurants that cater? Any suggestions for specific items to serve? Our venue doesn't have a super workable kitchen, just a "catering nook," by the way.
Thank you!
Liz


I think $1000-1500 is a huge sum of money to lay out and food is cheaper in quantities, yes? Though I got some helpful suggestions, I also got a lot of responses like these:

"Your budget seems quite unrealistic for that many people "

"$10–12.50 per person isn't a realistic budget... If $1,500 is your limit, I'd suggest slashing your guest list to 50 people or fewer. It's still a wedding even if it's smaller." (This one annoyed me. I couldn't possibly slash my guest list! Y'all know how huge my family is!)

"Wow. That budget is totally unrealistic."

UNhelpful. There were some helpful responses, though. You can read them all here, if you're interested.

Any suggestions from the homefront? The only thing I'm sure about is that I want to serve something like cake or cupcakes. My current ideas are:
- An Indian buffet (no worries, I promise that there are non-spicy options. I don't eat hot food!)
- Only serving hors d'oeurves (pre-packaged and heated up) and dessert
- Really good quality Italian subs

1 comment:

  1. Hi Liz -- I'm way behind in reading your blog (sorry!) but it sounds like you did get some good leads on this. I think it's do-able, but will take a lot of creativity and flexibility. The more difficult part may be in deciding your expectations on feeding people... hors d'oeurves vs. full meal. Maybe it would also be a good exercise to see how much it would cost to do a few different versions outright and work backwards? Would love to catch up on where you are w/ this and talk more over the weekend? xoxoxo

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