Shrimp cocktail. Woooo
Ok having since spoken to her, she’s on a $3,000 budget.
I’d assume a grand for booze and a grand for food.
She can get the venue basically free and dresses etc are not out of that as a friend of ours who is a dressmaker is making her dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses as well.
Does this give her any more leeway?
(you may have guess I have been charged with helping - (read: organising) this part)
Well, that’s about $16 per person. She could get a fair assortment of finger foods from this place as an example. If she were to go to $1200 for food, that’d be $20 per person and she could probably get a meal. Has she (or you) tried calling any catering companies? It can actually be cheaper sometimes than trying to corral people into making all that stuff for a wedding.
Yeah, we’ll definitely be investigating that option aswell. Thanks for the link. :).
At the moment, the bride is very much in a do-it-youself (ourselves) frame of mind. To be honest, it’s fine, in our group of close friends we’ve got 2 chefs (who we’re drawing up menus with on coasters in pubs. And it seems to be an ongoing conversation. Since I last posted, the bride has rung me and said “Peter has offered to donate fish and smoke it for us!” (He is one of our deepsea fishing circle), and we’ve thrown around ideas like:
Vietnamese Rolls
Smoked Fish (yuummm I think he’ll need like 3 trials of this before the big event just to make sure it’s up to my personal approval - seriously his smoked fish is the best thing in the world 
) free!
Mini peking duck pancakes = not sure of the price
Cob loafs (4-5), stuffed with spinach and bacon
Asparagus wrapped in parmesan
Poppadums with assorted dips
Tzatsiki and vegetable platters
Honey Soy and Satay Wings
satay sticks
a big plate of sushi
and we’re looking at maybe going to a chinese bakery and getting a selection of their wonderful mini cakes for the end of the night.
though she hasn’t ruled catering out, i (being a natural project manager), want to establish effort vs cost vs resource needed for making her big day the way that she wants it. And then i’ll be realistic. :dubious:
We would aim 2-3 pieces per dish for each person. (with natch, the vege sticks and dips and stuff much more than that).
What do you guys think?
Edit. One of our friend’s dads, has also offered the use of his pristine vintage aston martin (sp) to drive the bride and her dad to the ceremony.
We’re going the extra mile for this girl - she’s been with her fiance for 10 years and I don’t think that she ever expected to get married. She’s so in love and so happy it’s wonderful. And we’re all enjoying the preparations as much as she is.
I did this same type of thing for my wedding. Some sites I checked out said if finger foods would be the only foods served, count on 10-12 pieces per person. I overestimated a little (a lot actually) and it worked out well.
This thread provided me with some good ideas. I posted some of the recipes I used in this thread.
The bacon and cream cheese crescents went over very well and people still ask me for the recipe almost a year and a half later.
I think 2-3 per dish per person is going to leave a lot of hungry people at your wedding, as well as a lot of uneaten food, perversely enough. People don’t know what figure you have in your head, they just eat the parts they like and leave what they don’t. I think melondeca’s 10-12 is a lot safer.
But that’s me. I have a phobia of people going hungry, and I mean that seriously. I get panic attacks just thinking about it. When I plan a party, I generally think, “OK, what if everyone eats only shrimp? That’s how much shrimp I need to get. Now what if they only eat the asparagus? That’s how much asparagus we need.” And so on down the menu. I’m not saying you need to go that far, but 2-3 sounds skimpy to me.
Pastry things like vol-au-vents, classy sausage rolls (like venison sausage or ostrich) and mini-quiches are good filling fare for this sort of do. Short pastry is much more filling than phyllo or wonton wrappers.
Having said that, try wrapping phyllo around the asparagus & parmesan & baking. Better yet, make it a smoked cheese like smoked mozzarella.
Put the smoked fish or some other stuff on garlic bruschetta - cheap, easy to make and can be made well in advance.
Yeah I do see what you mean.
Gah. I never thought it would be this hard!
That’s what best friends are for, right? 
Actually I left bruschetta off my list. I live on that stuff. It’s delicious 
Serving nothing but finger food at a 6pm reception would be a pretty unpleasant thing to do to guests. That time of day pretty much demands a meal. It doesn’t have to be a sit down meal, a buffet, even a stand up one limited to fork foods, would be fine, but it should more than light bites given that it’s happening over a traditional meal time. That sort of thing can be done relatively inexpensively if you take the focus away from a meat/potato/veg orientation and look at things like pasta dishes that are inexpensive yet filling.
I think I’m drifting away from the intial question here. Please, please, please be assured, the food supplied will be substantial. No one at my best friend’s wedding will go hungry. I promise you all, scouts honor. 
I will take photos, if we decide to go this way so you can see all the satisfied and well fed people at the wedding.
Maybe I stressed the limited budget too much. So sorry for any miscommunication there. I guess what the question really is is this: My friend who is getting married would like to investigate the possibility of catering it ourselves (the 5 girls in our group).
She would like to have finger food - and copious amounts of it - circulated at her wedding instead of a formal sit down situation. The group that are invited are more about the music and the alcohol and having a good time, rather than any formalities.
Our dilemma thus far is: we’ve been socialising with each other for many many years and we are bored of our usual passed around at the bbq finger foodfair, and are looking for some interesting things to add to the potential menu. I guess when I mentioned the budget I meant “can’t afford to serve 60 people caviar”
So the question is: Do any you of you awesome cooks out there have any wonderful, exotic unusual cocktail food recipes that we could consider adding to the list of possibilties.
We’re not making any decisions right now, and we are investigating all options including a fork buffet - which we know we could cover in budget time and resource no worries - but for the moment, I’m concentrating on the Bride’s initial request which was fun, different and elegant wedding finger food.
Thanks again to all who have answered - you’ve given me a wonderful insight - and believe me all suggestions have been added to the list.
Many thanks
T
- Get a large grapefruit.
- Cut it in half.
- Cover each half in aluminum foil.
- Get a bunch of toothpicks.
- Stab a couple cubes of cheese and a cube of pineapple on each one.
- Top each toothpick with a glace cherry.
- Stick the toothpicks in the half-a-grapefruit.
Bada bing, “cheese pineapple porcupine”, the perfect appetizer for weddings, children’s parties, or bar mitzvahs.
My mother has the BEST recipe for stuffed mushrooms-want me to hunt it up?
Guinastasia that would rock thank you so much - only if it’s no trouble.
Jimm - you rock - thank you for the suggestion. It reminded me of this, which makes me break into gales of laughter everytime I read it.
Franktacular! Awesome. Go on, do it - I dare you!
I don’t know if The Martha Stewart Hors D’oeuvres Handbook is available in Australia but it is amazing. Some ideas:
Globe grapes, hollowed out with goat cheese in each one
Tortilla espanol
Gazpacho in cups made of chunks of cucumber hollowed out
Smoked fish on toast points
Strawberries & green grapes dipped in chocolate
Sooooo tempting…
Hello Again I love the idea of the gaspacho and the strawberries and grapes. And I’ll check out the Martha Stewart book too! Thanks.
Yes, please. I just got home from serving about 100 people at a reception after a concert, and I made some great stuffed mushrooms from a Cook’s Country article/recipe. Basically you pre-roast the mushrooms, first gills up to contain all the liquid, then upside down to finish browning, then fill and finish heating. Takes a bit longer than my usual “fill raw mushrooms and bake till bubbly” but you can make them a few days in advance, and they tasted great…much better than my usual. I made the goat cheese and herb stuffing recipe from the article, but now I want to make more and different stuffed mushrooms for a reception in two weeks (for a recital ** Lillith Fair** is giving) so bring on the recipes!
I went to a party recently where there were a few different kinds of roll-ups- stuff spread out on a tortilla, rolled up, and cut into slices. They all seemed to have cream cheese bases- there was a crab one with cream cheese and garlic, a smoked salmon with cream cheese and garlic, a black bean with cream cheese, jalepenos and salsa, and a shrimp with cream cheese and pesto. They were a big hit, especially the crab ones.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but you are basically serving snack foods at dinnertime and no one will eat them and it will be a total disaster ending in bloodshed.
Oh, wait! It’s just a wedding reception! Things will be fine as long as no one sets fire to the building.