Preparing for your wedding can be quite exhausting since you need to deal with various wedding elements – from the exquisite wedding dresses, gorgeous flowers, memorable souvenirs, awesome wedding catering package to the perfect wedding venues and themes.
One of the essential parts of any wedding is the food. However, it is indeed a fact that food is one the biggest expense in a wedding, most especially when it entails a lot of guests and you want to have the best menu on your big day.
Luckily enough, there are tips and tricks that you can do to save money on food without compromising the quality. Let’s get into the delicious world of creative but affordable food that your guests can enjoy!
The Creative Way
It is undeniable that food stations are definitely taking over the traditional sit-down wedding reception style. Wedding packages nowadays offer the option to serve guests using food stations. Here are several ideas that you may consider on your wedding reception.
- Mimosa Bar – Mimosa bars are absolutely perfect for a daytime or brunch wedding. It is one of the easiest bar ideas to implement – all you need are a selection of champagnes and fresh fruit juices. Champagne glasses, ice and tongs, labels for juices, and a beautiful flower arrangement are some of the other things you need to perfect your very own mimosa bar.
- Pizza Buffet –Who does not love pizza? Go Italian by setting up a pizza buffet in your wedding reception. Have a variety of pizza flavors – from the meaty ones to the delectable vegetarian choices – to cater to the various preferences of your guests.
- Float and Milkshake Buffet – Having a float and milk shake buffet is one of the fun and exciting buffets you could ever have in your wedding, especially if you are having a summer wedding. Provide enjoyable and refreshing experience to your wedding guests by giving them a wide variety of ice cream flavors and sweet toppings. To complete the whole set, add some soda for a refreshing taste of float.
- Cinema themed food – Make your guests feel like they are going to a theater by serving them some flavored popcorn, nachos, and mini hot dogs! There’s nothing like having some of your all-time favorite snacks while celebrating a wonderful event. You can even opt to show some snippets of your favorite movies to go with the whole cinema theme!
- The Taco Bar – Get that Mexican-inspired wedding food station by putting up a taco bar. Since taco bars consists of a wide variety of ingredients, it is important to plan the menu carefully. You will need several choices of meat, tortillas, vegetables, various toppings, and assorted sauces.
- Festival or Carnival Food – Last but not the least, one creative idea you may use on your wedding day is serving a festival or carnival food. You can always go back in time and provide your guests with their favorite childhood treats – you can rent food trucks that serve burgers, hot dogs, twisty potatoes, doughnuts, ice cream, and even cotton candy! Let your creative juices flow and be as quirky as possible when you opt for this kind of food station.
The Affordable Way
Even if food is considered as the biggest expense in a wedding, you can still pull off the most satisfying wedding reception without breaking the bank. Here are some of the useful tricks that may help you to serve the best food choices to your guests while saving money.
- Provide your own appetizers – Instead of choosing appetizers from catering services, you can always make your own appetizers. Though this may seem hard for some, it is actually not. All you have to do is to choose appetizers that can be stored, frozen, and can be heated for the cocktail hour. This will not only save you time and effort, hence, this will ultimately help you to save up money.
- Avoid availing servers – This may sound really weird, but you can serve appetizers without having some people to serve them. You will be saving a lot of money by just allowing your guests to get their own instead of having some people bring it to them.
- Limit open bar – You can still have an open bar even if you want to save money. However, you may consider having a limited open bar. For example, your reception is for five hours, opt for the open bar to operate for about two or three hours. By doing this, you will only pay for a two-hour open bar instead of five hours.
- Opt for beer and wine only – Choose to serve beer and wine instead of different kinds of liquor drinks. As a result, you will not have to pay for any other type of liquor. In addition, your guests will not have a hard time to choose what alcoholic beverages they will get.
- Or you can always choose for a signature drink – To really save more, opt for a signature drink only. You can always consider you and your bride/groom’s favorite liquor to make it more personalized.
- Consider having a family style – One of the advantages of family meal style is that a pan of one meal (ex: lasagna) will already cater one table, which commonly has 10 people. It is much cheaper compared to 10 plates of lasagna.
- Consider serving non-alcoholic beverages – Who says you can’t have fun without alcohol? By choosing to serve non-alcoholic beverages, you can ultimately save up. Consider serving some fruit smoothies and other well-known non-alcoholic drinks like iced mocha, milk tea, and much more.
- Checking the price of both buffet and plated meals – You have probably thought of a buffet meal as being an expensive meal plan, but it is not always the case. Before deciding on your wedding’s menu, you should always check the prices of both the buffet and plated meals, then you can freely choose which of the two options is cheaper.
- Never serve out of season food – What most wedding celebrants forget is that their choice of food menu on their wedding reception may not be in the season which makes it more expensive. For this reason, make sure that the ingredients that your chosen cater services will utilize are in season in order to prevent spending excessive money.
- Cupcake cake – It is true that the wedding cake is the ultimate star of all the food in any wedding catering. That is why many couples spend a huge amount of money to have a big and extravagant cake. However, gone are the days that the humongous wedding cakes are a must. You can still have a perfect wedding reception by opting for a cupcake cake. Afterward, you can give it to your guests as a wedding favor.
A wedding is one of the most memorable milestones in a couple’s life. As much as possible, you want it to be perfect and magical. And why shouldn’t it be? It is the moment when you will commit your whole life to be with the person you love and to vow that no matter what might happens, you will never let go of each other. This kind of special event is best celebrated with only the best food. As a bride-to- be, it is essential to know various tips and tricks to pull off the best wedding reception ever.
Choosing the Right Caterer
For various and scrumptious wedding catering packages, Juan Carlo is the perfect wedding catering service to go to. We have been consistent and committed to giving our clients an exquisite and enticing wedding reception. We believe that any client that avails our service must be treated with utmost care, respect, and love. That is why we do our best to not only satisfy our client’s standards, but we also go above and beyond their expectations to bring them an event that they will surely remember.
We only choose the best ingredients, the best chefs, the best staff, and the best service. Here at Juan Carlo, everything that you have availed of will be delivered with the same quality that was promised to you in the first place. We take it upon ourselves to help any wedding celebrant to have the best night of their lives by giving them the best food and service that they will ever experience.
We assure you that a complete and luxurious wedding reception will surely be achieved when you choose Juan Carlo. Book a culinary tasting experience with them by taking a look at this page.