How to get the Wedding Reception Food Right, First Time.

a) Wedding reception food choices will have to be sent out with the invitations and guests will need to confirm their food choice when they RSVP. At this point you must make a note of the choices for later.

b) You will need to devise a way of letting the waiting staff know who chose what. Don’t rely on the guests remembering as they will have forgotten and just order what they fancy. This will cause carnage in the kitchen as there will be a set number of each meal type.

The easiest way to avoid this is to place a mark on the place settings to notify the staff of that guest’s food choice. An example is to place a design such as a small dot on the place settings of those guests who choose beef.

2. Non-Catered Venue - If your reception is being hosted somewhere without catering you have two choices. Either you bring in caterers or you cater yourself.

a) If you decide to bring in caterers most of the above will still apply and as with catered venues there are still some ways of reducing the costs slightly:

- Check the cost of using the catering company's table linen, plates, cutlery and glasses etc. then shop around and see if you can get these items cheaper elsewhere. Many of these rental firms will be able to deliver everything you need and arrange to have it collected after the wedding. Some will even collect them dirty and wash them for you (for an additional fee).

- See if you can reduce the number of waiting staff. With less staff to pay, the bill will come down. But bear in mind with less staff the meal will drag on longer and may impact on other items such as the disco or band (or the best man’s ability to deliver his speech if he has been drinking during the two hour meal).

- Consider a buffet meal. This is usually cheaper than a formal sit down meal and you won't need waiting staff. You will however still need waiting staff to collect the plates, so you won't be able to do away with them completely. Another down side is that you will usually have to offer a wider selection of food choices and you can end up with more wastage.

One way around this is to organise a pig roast, where a whole pig is cooked on a spit. This is visually very impressive and a barbecue theme can be relaxed and informal. Guests won't mind returning their plates themselves (reducing the number of waiting staff required and therefore, cost).

3. Cater Yourself - This is an option at most venues (except hotels). This is not one to be entered into lightly as it takes a lot of organising and will invariably cause a bit of stress. That said, if you are well organised and sort things out in plenty of time you can save a substantial amount of money (most of your budget will normally be taken up feeding your guests). You will also need to enlist the help of as many friends and family as possible (preferably the ones who are good cooks!).

The simplest way to proceed if you choose to do the wedding food catering yourself is to go for a buffet. As mentioned above this method means you can reduce the number of waiting staff you will need (or eliminate if you go for the BBQ theme). A note of caution however. With most buffets, guests tend to eat more than they would if the food was served to them. So you will need to keep an eye on portion control.

One simple method of providing the wedding reception food is to ask your helpers to prepare something and bring it with them. For example some could bring soup for the starter and some could prepare a selection of deserts or main courses etc. You could replace the main courses with a pig spit and serve it with a selection of simple salads.

Wedding finger food is a simple way of catering for the evening reception and can be as simple as sandwiches or cocktail sausages and vol-au-vents. Again, you will likely have lots of friends who could each prepare enough wedding finger foods to serve around five to ten guests.

If you want to get a little more complicated you could go for fish and chip cones (these are becoming very popular at weddings, even designer ones). They are actually very simple to prepare, just create a small cone out of newspaper and place one to two small fish goujons with a few chips et voila, one designer portion of wedding reception food.

So there you have it, your wedding reception food ideas can be as straight forward or as complicated as you need them to be. Just take your time and no matter which option you choose it should all be straight forward.

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