A wedding is unquestionably a landmark event in our lives. The goal for such an occasion is to ensure only the best is arranged. Typically, it's expected to offer plenty of high-quality food for the attendees, given the significant role that dining plays in the celebration. It's often pointed out that a large chunk of the budget, in fact, some estimates suggest as much as 50%, should be dedicated to catering and the venue. However, for those working within a more restrictive budget, opting for venues that permit self-catering could be a practical solution.
Self-catering is something good and you can offer the food as you want through self-catering. However, it can be pretty hard to manage the food for a large number of guests. So, if you are going to through a big wedding party, make sure that you know what you are doing. Keep reading the article to find out how to plan for the self-cater wedding and what to take into consideration.
How to Plan Self Cater for Your Wedding Venues
As we said earlier, it is usually recommended to put a generous amount of your wedding budget into the food. But what is your option when you have a small budget? It can be pretty hard to offer some good foods to the guests with a low budget. However, going for self-catering can be a solution for you. Still, cooking for a lot of people can be an issue. To make things easier, below we will let you know about things you can consider.
Make the Food Ahead
Self-catering will be a great option to save some bucks. However, it is not going to be easy to cook food for such a large number of people. Even an average wedding ceremony consist around 100 or more person. Even if you are a confident home chef, it can still be hard for you to manage such large orders. Well, what you can do is to cook the food earlier. Yes, it might sound ridiculous but it is possible.
You need to be a bit tricky here. Go for a food that can be easily reheated without damaging the taste. The good news is even a lot of hot dishes like meat can be cooked before a few days of the wedding. You must make sure that the food is properly reheated on the day of the wedding before the feast. While planning this, make sure that you have enough space to preserve all the food. Most possibly, you will require a refrigerator.
Plan the Menu
When you are self-catering, you have a lot of options for the wedding feast. However, you will want to keep it simple to cope up with the budget. To do this, make sure that you are preparing the menu. You might take help from the close persons about planning the menu based on your budget. Note that cooking food for the ceremony is something you cannot do alone. So, make sure that you have enough helping hands to help you.
Try to pick someone who is good at cooking. You can prepare something like roast beef or chicken with the help of the additional help. However, don’t worry; if they are not so good with it. You can pick some foods that can be easily cooked or pre-cooked for serving later. These include mixed salad, potato salad, sandwiches, coleslaw, vegetable side dishes, pasta dishes, bread basket, etc. Pick the one you are confident about.
You might also want to add some desserts if there is a sufficient budget after planning for the main meal. One of the good things about the dessert is they can be served cold and pre-cooked.
What About a Buffet?
Buffet at the wedding always sounds special. If you want to offer a buffet at the wedding, you will require at least one main dish. There should be several side dishes to accommodate the main dish. You can pick some side dishes that are easy to prepare. Such as, you can add various types of bread, salad, etc. Try to keep the main dish decent enough so that the gust finds it satisfying or fulfilling.
If you think it can be hard for you to prepare the main dish, you might consider something that can be easily ordered. Such as, you can pick a nearby restaurant or catering service that is known to be good and deliver the food at the right time. Some of the thing that you might consider as the main dish includes roasted turkey, roast beef, etc. You can order these as main dishes and DIY prepare the side dishes to save some bucks.
Order from Restaurant
It is not going to be easy to DIY the catering for the wedding. You need to put a lot of effort into the works. Moreover, if you don’t have enough skill in cooking, you might end up spoiling things instead of doing any good. In such situations, it would be better if you order the tricky and main dishes from the restaurant. In fact, you can order everything from there if your budget serves. Following this way, you don’t require putting a lot of effort, time, and hard work into preparing the dishes.
Some of the foods can also be ordered from grocery stores. Usually, it will be more cost-effective to order and get ready food from the restaurant compared to hiring catering services. However, make sure that you are ready helpers who will serve the food on the wedding day. It will be quite impossible to serve and manage everything alone. You can consider a specific duty to the helpers so that things get done efficiently.
Conclusion
Self-catering in a wedding ceremony is not going to be something easy. However, if you have what it takes, you might end up offering better food to the guest compared to the catering services. We hope that you will find the above information helpful to self-cater the foods at your wedding venues.
