Catering questions

In My Humble Opinion
21

Re: Flowers.
I had the full whack: a bridal bouquet, 2 bridesmaids, 2 flowergirls, 8 buttonholes, 2 corsages, 10 table tops and a large arrangement for the newel post on the stairs. These were done by a florist.

In the church, we had one long arrangement in the vestry (which was transferred to the top table in the reception) and one large arrangement at the front. These were done by the “church ladies”, with flowers supplied at wholesale prices by our florist. My flowers were cream roses and orange Calla lillies and the cost for all of this was £500 (about $750), of which £100 was my bouquet, considering what we got with our money I think it was pretty good value.

Obviously, you could do it for much less.
Shop around for a nice florist for your bouquets and talk about getting seasonal flowers which will cost less. If you’re not particularly fussy about the type of flower and more about the colour, you could give your florist the freedom to pick the cheapest flowers in the right colour that are available at the time (wholesale flower prices fluctuate depending on weather, demand and availability) obviously that is going to be easier with white flowers and harder with purple ones!

If you can find a florist who will do your bouquets, and get you flowers for the tables at wholesale prices you might be able to do the tables yourself the night before the wedding and save money that way. If you have friends who are good at flower arranging, they might be willing to help too.

Greenery is cheap, flowers are expensive, so you could use less flowers and more greenery to save money. Candles and/or confetti on tables is also a cheaper alternative but will look really festive.

Single blooms instead of bouquets look very modern, so perhaps you could think about carrying a singly lily, rose or peony, or if your daughters would prefer not to carry bouquets at all.

Good luck!

22

Thanks, irishgirl. This is exactly what I plan to do. My colors are red and black, by the way, so I’m guessing that’ll be red carnations! :slight_smile:

23

That really isn’t difficult. My ceremony was not by a JOP and it was just under five minutes. People came up to me afterwards and thanked me for the brevity of the ceremony.
Dung Beetle, I did all the food for my wedding so if you are interested I could give you some recipes. Our ceremony started at 5:30 and we had a full array of appetizers. Most of my friends did not eat ahead of time because they knew how much food I was having.

Everyone was able to eat as much as they would have with a full meal with much more variety and the cost for feeding 85 people was around $300 plus $80 for the girls who set up the buffet and made sure it was well stocked.

24

Actually, $1200 or so is a good price for the venue – particularly since you will be able to get married there too, saving the cost of a church (which can be $300 or more, believe it or not).

Are you planning a DJ or band? Bands are more, obviously, and – because of our ‘budget’ aspect – we don’t deal with them much. Around here (I’m in Virginia), a good DJ will run around $400 for 4 hours – some are a bit more, some a bit less. Does your venue include tables, chairs, and linens? If it does, that’s another huge saving – rentals for these things are quite pricey. The last wedding we did where we had to rent all these things (tables, chairs and linens for 120), the rental tab, including delivery, was right at a thousand bucks. Are you allowed to bring in your own food and liquor? Because, if the tables and chairs are included in the venue, and you are willing to forego high-price items such as professional photography, you might be able to swing a casual meal for 100 on your budget. Then you’d be able to move the wedding back to the time you prefer. The May wedding I mentioned earlier has a similar budget to yours and we’ve found a caterer (a local grocery store chain) who can do our menu, including setup, delivery, and two servers for the buffet, for 10 bucks a person. The menu is fried chicken, pork BBQ, green beans, corn, potato salad, rolls, & veggie & fruit trays – simple fare, but filling. Disposable dishes, napkins and flatware are included in that price. They are serving beer (2 kinds), wine, spiked and plain lemonade, and iced tea. The iced tea is included in the catering fee, and the rest will cost around $350 – I haven’t double checked that figure yet, BTW – that is the bride’s estimate. She wants to use real glasses for the drinks (rented), so that will add to her costs. Plastic glasses will be much cheaper, if that doesn’t bother you.

Doing your own flowers is definately a cheap move – and carnations are both inexpensive and easy to work with. You could do plain handtied bouquets for the bridal party – a dozen red carnations with the stems trimmed and a black ribbon tied in a bow for you and smaller versions of the same for your girls. For centerpieces, you could get plain glass cylinder vases (they can often be found at the dollar store in different sizes, so we use them a lot!), put some black and white marbles in the bottom of each, stick in a few red carnations, then sprinkle a little black, white and red confetti around the bottom of the vase. Another thing you could do, is to use a grouping of three of the cylinder vases on each table. Stuff the vases with red rose petals (bought by the bag at a floral warehouse) and top them off with water – varying the levels of water in each vase. Pop a floating candle in each vase, then sprinkle more of the petals around the vases. I wish I had a better photo of what this looks like – it’s really very pretty. Link – scroll back to the Cox High Prom phot of the table. Scroll on further (to the Colonial High Prom) for a version of the same centerpiece, but done with shells instead of rose petals.

25

Hey, this is starting to seem like fun again! Melondeca, I don’t know if I’d dare try cooking the spread myself, but please post the recipes. I know other people who are reading this are interested and maybe if it’s not too hard I could do parts of it.

Jess, I do have a crafty aunt. I may prevail upon her in January to do me up some of the centerpieces, and I like the bouquets too. Do you think all the floral decor has to be real, or is it just as expensive to get nice fakes?

I haven’t begun to look for a DJ yet, but that’s the way I’m planning to go for music. Possibly I can let them get things started, then after a few hours have someone else monitor the CD player.

26

Oh, I forgot…the venue does include chairs, tables, a sound system…it really is great. It relieves me greatly that you don’t think I paid too much!
I do want black tablecloths, which will be a bit extra.

27

hmmm…red and black…artifical poppies?

Anyway, my top budget tip for weddings is to do the invitations yourself. We did all of ours. They were quite complicated, as we made booklets with information on accommodation, transport and driving directions, and included response cards. We also made our lives more complicated by doing evening and full invitations.

We did it for about $1.50 an invitation (plus postage), which is much, much cheaper than a printer. It took a week of doing an hour or two in the evening to assemble the invitations and address them by hand, but again, if you’re doing something simpler it will be WAY less labour intensive and much cheaper. Black ink on red paper with black envelopes would be lovely, and not too difficult if you have a good stationary store and access to a laser printer.

Underwear, shoes, handbags etc. should be organised ASAP.
You’re limited by what is available in the shops, so it might take a while to see something you like and online/mail order will take time to arrive, so don’t leave it too late!

28

Black linens will be more expensive, but would really give you a nice impact with red centerpieces. A cheaper option might be to rent white tableclothes (white is always cheapest), and cut ‘toppers’ out of black tulle to put on top. Depending on how much more expensive the black linens are (and on how cheap you can find the tulle) this may save you money.

Silk florals can actually be cheaper than real (you can shop for sales, etc.) and are a lot easier in many ways. Specifically because you can do so much of the work far ahead of time. All of our bouquets are silk. That’s all we will use – making up fresh bouquets is just too much for us at the last minute (since we will also be doing the decorating and stuff also). We’ll use fresh flowers on the tables, if the bride wants, but not ornate arrangements – if they want anything more elaborate than loose flowers in a vase, we use silks, or help them find a florist.

29

At 3:00, I would NOT be expecting a substantial pig-out. I would expect either hors d’oeurves (I know I mangled that) and perhaps champagne. If it were hot, I would expect perhaps finger sandwiches and champagne or punch. I would expect cake or a dessert of some sort.

The “disappointment” of people who attend a 3:00 wedding expecting a bacchanal of free hooch is not your concern :slight_smile:

You may considering wording your invitation/reception card to read “Champagne reception” or “summer refreshment reception” ro warn those who think receptions are an opportunity to strap on the feedbag willy-nilly.

VCNJ~

30

Interesting point about the invitations, irishgirl. We’ve actually talked about making our own, only they wouldn’t be the usual sort…we were thinking along the lines of just a note on some nice paper, with a request to RSVP. Pro: people would know right off that this was a informal wedding at which protocols might not be followed. Con: Too cheap and tacky? What do you think?

spingears, I just noticed that your sig and the contents of your post #17 are clashing wildly!

31

5:00? You have to feed them at 5. I think light food at 3 is fine, but I wouldn’t just give people canapes at 5 (or, reasonably, 6:30!)

32

I didn’t express myself very well there. I was just trying to weasel out of serving food by having the thing at 3:00, but if that’s not going to work out then I’ll either go back to what I really want (5:00), or move to a time when no one could possibly think I’d serve much food (1:00).

Bah, that sentence still looks like hell! I tend to be tired and confused this late in the week.

33

Cheap and tacky? Certainly not! From an etiquette perspective, a handwritten note is the eact proper way to issue an invitation to an informal wedding.

34

I think an afternoon wedding/reception with no dinner is just fine, as long as you don’t let it stray into normal dinner time (where people will start expecting food). However if you do plan to serve alcoholic punch I would recommend hors d’ouevres or at least some cake as well, to keep people from getting tipsy on an empty tummy.

35

Let’s see, digging back in my memory of getting married three years ago:

Music - we made up an extensive list of songs we wanted, had Jim’s best man burn them on cd’s for us, and had my MOH’s husband play them and monitor the cd player for us (he also did dj work on the side, so he was a natural choice). I strongly recommend this - we got only songs we love, it was a “couple” thing for us to do choosing the songs, and we still have the cd’s and can play them and remember our wedding any time we like. I still have the list - I can email it to you, if you like, dung beetle. The songs are screened for wedding appropriateness - no “Every Breath You Take” by The Police :smiley:

Invitations - we made our own on our printer at home. You can buy invitation kits at any stationery store. I think they looked just fine when we were done.

Timing - Our wedding ceremony with a JOP-like officiant took about 15 minutes, tops. If you had a late-ish wedding (say 7 pm), you could have a candlelight wedding and just serve finger foods/snacks, I believe. That sounds quite nice, actually.

Wedding Cake - Safeway bakery. Seriously. It was a very pretty cake, and delicious to boot.

36

Dang it, I forgot the bar. We had an open bar with a tip jar (the liquor licenses around here are much less complicated if you say you’re not selling the booze). People were free to drink all night without paying a cent if they wanted, but most people tossed a ten or twenty in the tip jar. We also had home-made wine on the tables for dinner (a red and a white) supplied by one of the ushers who makes wine as a hobby.

Come to think of it, we asked our friends and family to do lots of things for us that suited their hobbies, and they all seemed happy to do it. We gave them all plenty of notice and were very clear about what we expected and that we were asking them, not demanding it of them. People seemed to be happy to be included.

37

Just a thought and I don’t know if it’s feasible for you. I do like the idea of the tulle toppers for white tablecloths, and tulle, or just netting, should be cheap. If you don’t want to top the whole table with it, you could scrunch it up around the centerpiece, kind of like a nest, or use it as a swag on the front of the table.
But what I really wanted to suggest is, if you can’t find or can’t afford black tablecloths, try the local fabric store. They might have or be able to get something relatively inexpensive for you that you could just finish the ends of, or maybe even something that wouldn’t really need hemming. Sometimes they can be pretty imaginative for things like that.

Maybe you could do white or red with black runners or something, too.

38

How long is the ceremony? If you’ve kissed and run down the aisle by 4pm, I’d expect a high tea, you know, crumpets, finger sandwiches, tea, coffee, maybe some wine. Nothing heavy.

If you’re moving the ceremony to 1pm people are going to expect a late lunch, and if you move it to 5pm, people are going to expect dinner. I don’t suppose you could get married at 7am, and have a nice champagne brunch afterward?

39

I decided to quit lurking just to post this info - I hope it helps.
I was in the photojournalism program at UF not too long ago. If you were already willing to forego the professional photographer you might want to email the head of the photojouralism program. He’d often forward emails from people looking for a student photographer. UF has a really good photography program and there are usually students looking to do weddings for the practice of shooting an event. There are also students who want to do weddings as a career. Just make sure you ask to see a profile of past work. You might also want to know if the student has taken the “photographic lighting” course - especially if you’re going with an evening candlelit ceremony.
I tried to write the rest of this tactfully, but I’m really not good at that so here it is- there will probably be students willing to work for free in order to expand their portfolio. Some of them may be good, some will be pretty not-good-yet. The important thing no matter what price they ask for their services is to look at their past work.

40

Wow, I caught a lurker! Welcome to the Dope, September5Photo! That is a fabulous idea about the photography and I never would have thought of it.

featherlou, I’d like to see your song list. I haven’t been able to think of many happy love songs that I like, and my fiance’ is a fan of the blues, so no help there.