Tips for Wedding Catering from Fête Catering and Ballroom
Fête’s Tips for Working with a Caterer for Your Wedding:
• Set realistic planning goals and book in advance, especially during the busy season.
• Deciding on a venue is a key step involved in choosing a caterer. Ensuring the space is the right size for your guests is key—no one wants a reception that feels empty or crowded or a room that makes serving difficult.
• It is usually much less expensive to hold your event at your caterers’ ballroom than at an offsite locale – there are no additional rentals, venue percentages, or venue charges, and the bars are usually way less if provided by the caterer on or off-site than if the venue does the bar.
• If you do select a venue which requires an ‘off-site’ caterer, be sure the caterer has proper insurance, licenses, trucks & equipment – make sure they can really handle it.
• Know your budget, and know where you have wiggle room and where you can’t afford to. For catering, you are quoted per person, so it is very helpful to come up with a per person price as opposed to a fixed number.
• Call the prospective caterers instead of sending a mass email – we all usually need more information than you provide in the email in order to do your proposal, and we like to chat with you to learn a bit about you instead of emailing you some generic proposal.
• When meeting with caterers, let them learn about you and see your personalities.
• Figure out the overall feel and atmosphere you would like for your wedding – it is helpful to your caterer and vendors to pick up on the vibe you are envisioning. Some brides have known what they want since they were little girls, some are still unclear about what they want and chatting with the caterer and florist can help develop your vision.
• Be original! You don’t need fancy foods and caviar to have a wonderful reception.
• Would you like your food to reflect your ethnic background, active lifestyle, or love of chocolate? Suggest it! Your caterer wants your menu to be wonderful, fun, delicious and well within your budget. Personalize it… create a menu that puts the spotlight on you and your fiancé and reflects your tastes.
• Don’t be afraid to try something new and different – let your guests walk away at the end of the night talking about how the food wasn’t like typical ‘catering food’.
• After meeting with possible caterers, look over each proposal and determine which one seemed to get the best sense of what you had in mind and proposed the menu that will be the best fit for your wedding. If you have a theme in mind, which caterer can best help you reflect it? Which catering representative did you ‘click’ with them most? Which menu proposal will best match the ambience you want for your wedding? Which caterer will be best able to accommodate any dietary limitations without compromising quality? Which company will give you the freshest and best tasting food?
• Allow your caterer to do their job…be involved and responsive but don’t micro manage.
•Does your venue have a preferred caterer list? Explore all the websites and menus from this list to help narrow down your caterer selection and then get bids from your 3 favorites.
•Don’t feel limited to “canned” catering menu packages. Work with a company that is willing to let you customize your menu.
•Have one and only one person from the bridal party/family dealing with the caterer. It can be confusing for us to receive calls from the best friend, Mom, Dad, Grandma, the bride and groom, and the wedding planner and still keep everything straight!
•Check the bottom line and fine print on your contract making sure that there are no hidden charges and everything is included from the get-go. A real bummer is ending up with ‘surprise’ charges on your bill at the end.
•Remember that the size of your guest list directly impacts the cost of your menu.
•Write a thank you letter to your catering coordinator & the staff – they really care and it means so much to them to hear how happy you were with what they did for you.
•It is a day all about you and your loved ones… remember to have fun and enjoy it – let the professionals that you hired do their job so that you can ‘be a guest at your own party’.
With years of restaurant and catering experience between them, local husband-and-wife restaurateurs Jaymie and Tommy Klauber began Fête Catering in 2003. Business has been booming ever since, so much so that Fête Catering offers its own onsite ballroom and event facilities in addition to providing offsite catering services. Fête is passionate about providing each and every customer with great food, service and atmosphere at affordable prices. www.caterfete.com
