Thursday, June 13, 2013

Catering on a budget

Sorry it's been a few days since I've blogged - I've been distracted trying to rent out my condo as my fiance and I are finally fully moving in together at the end of the month.  YAY for not living out of a suitcase and a couple of drawers!

In my last post I described how the cocktail reception portion of our wedding had grown from 30 people to 100.

I've spent the past couple of weeks getting quotes from caterers, comparison shopping, and coming up with a plan that is both affordable AND wonderful!

One of the things I want at the wedding is a candy/dessert buffet.  They have a great deal of visual appeal, and if you get little bags or boxes they double as both a catering item and your guest favors.

I REALLY like the glass apothecary jars that seem to be de rigeur for a candy buffet, but they are pricey.  However, they are available at Michaels crafts, who often have 50% off coupons for a single item.  Plan to stop by a store every week and pick one up, and you can get some beautiful glassware at a discount, OR do what I did - combine one or two of the pretty jars from Michaels with a bunch of clear glass vases, goblets, and bowls from a thrift store (6 items for $20!) and you have a beautiful bunch of display items that won't break your wallet.

An interesting side note - there is a brisk business on craigslist of brides selling the decor from their weddings to other brides.  They've discovered that it's often less expensive to buy decor items and resell them than to hire a decorating company.   Hooray for recycling!

As for the catering itself, I've gotten three quotes for a cocktail reception.  Two were for hand passed horsdoevres - one came in at just under $8000, the other at just under $3000.  Big difference?  The lower quote was from an up and coming catering company from a suburb.  The higher one from an established caterer from Vancouver.  If I didn't have an alternate plan, I would totally go with the suburban place - Fiesta Creative Catering.  I had their horsdoevres at a wedding show recently and they were delicious!

I got a third quote for a buffet table full of finger food from a catering company that is used a lot at the University I work at.  It came in around $3000 as well.  (Calhouns Catering)

None of those quotes included a dessert buffet.  

My future Mother in Law suggested an alternative - she'll do the platters of antipasto, charcuterie, fruit, and vegetables, my friend the chef can then concentrate on the more elaborate food items such as the baby bocconcini skewers, mini yorkies, italian meatball skewers, and prawn puttanesca, and we will see if some of the aunts would be interested in putting together the baked goods for the dessert portion of the dessert/candy buffet.  I figure we can do all this (including rentals) for about $2000.

Slate magazine posted an interesting article about the "average" cost of weddings these days - pointing out that "average" is a very misleading number.  It can be very skewed by a small percentage of weddings with stratospheric budgets, and most likely isn't factoring in the very small budgets of  DIY'er brides.  A more realistic number would be the "median" cost - which is significantly lower than the "average".  The article is here:  http://mobile.slate.com/articles/life/weddings/2013/06/average_wedding_cost_published_numbers_on_the_price_of_a_wedding_are_totally.html

Based on the article, the 27K average wedding is actually an 18K median wedding - still a HUGE amount of money, but much more realistic.  Another thing I think people don't realize is that non-party related costs are included in most wedding budgets - including the engagement and wedding rings - which can be appx. 20% of the budget.

My budget has trickled upwards from my original plan of 6K, and is sitting closer to 8K now - but that's still less than half of the median wedding cost of 2012. 

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