Preparing to Hire a Caterer for Your Wedding

Hiring a caterer is a huge decision. Indeed, most young couples find that the catering is the single biggest cost in the entire wedding planning process. It does not have to be, of course, but often it is. The trick for each couple is to make the catered part of their wedding celebration exactly what they need it to be both in quality and budget. To do this, however, a couple needs to spend a little time in preparation before they ever begin preparing to hire a caterer for their wedding celebration.

Create a Guest List
Since the most common fee structure among caterers is based on the number of guests, the only way to ensure that a couple can control their wedding budget is to know exactly how many people at most they want to entertain. Since most guest lists only expand as the couple realizes they over looked Uncle George etc. the only way to make sure this does not happen is to prepare an exhaustive guest list before they begin looking for venues and wedding professionals.

Accomplishing the assembling of a guest list, however, is easier said than done. One of the most efficient ways to make certain that everyone is covered after both sides have finished scouring the family photo albums for family and friends they might have forgotten about, is to use the discipline of putting together a couple different seating charts. This forces the couple to think about who is sitting with who and will often remind a couple of individual they might have forgotten as they think of who to seat Aunt Sarah next to. Putting together some sample seating charts can also help to inform the decision a couple has to make regarding the kind of reception venue they want as some offer round tables, others long tables, and still others offer no table options.

Establish a Budget for the Wedding
A good next step in preparing to hire a caterer is to figure out how much money does the couple have to spend on the wedding total and establish a budget? It is not enough, however, to simply divide that total based on the recommended percentages. That is the surest way to ...

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Understanding Wedding Catering

Knowledge is power. It's true even when talking about booking the catering for your wedding. If you understand what drives the caterer - that is to say, if you understand the things that keeps your caterer up at night wondering if he or she should even stay in business - then you are in a strong position to negotiate.

Likewise, if you do not have a basic understanding your wedding caterer's business you run the risk of making yourself look foolish at best to the caterers you visit and potentially hostile.

Fortunately, a basic understanding of the wedding catering business can buy a lot of goodwill with your caterer which in itself might get you a better price and certainly is something you will need later if your guest list changes dramatically at the last minute.

• Food Costs: This part seems obvious. If you want steak and lobster your cost is going to be higher than if you choose a pasta dish for your wedding reception meal. However, there are aspects that often escape the uninitiated individuals notice. I'm speaking specifically of the availability and diversity of ingredients. Normally, the more common the ingredient is the less expensive it is. It is simple supply and demand. Likewise, if the recipe that you choose uses two different kinds of wines and spices that the caterer wouldn't normally use, then you are going to pay higher prices.
• Flexibility Costs: In the realm of wedding catering flexibility costs are simply the costs that a bride and / or groom pay to offer their guests a choice of dining options. Due to the dietary restrictions of your guests you might find that you need to offer more than one main course as an option so that no one is left out. This is common and really is good policy as the host and hostess of a celebration. However, think about it from the caterer's perspective. You have ordered hazelnut stuffed chicken as one main course, and prime rib as the other main course. Over the course of a hundred weddings the split between each main course might be 61 % to 39%, but the caterer cannot buy the food for your wedding on that assumption. Instead he or she has to purchase and prepare enough of both to make sure that the last person who expresses their preference gets what they order - even if everybody else at the wedding ordered the same thing!
• Labor Cost: Don't forget that everyone on the caterer's staff has to be paid. This means that if the caterer has just five individuals on staff that need to be at your wedding for five hours (a bare minimum when you figure preparation, set up, service, and clean up), at a very conservative rate of twenty dollars an hour you are looking at an initial labor cost of five hundred dollars before anyone has paid for any food!

Most caterers are more than willing to give you whatever your heart desires, but they can't pull it out of thin air. Anything your order will have a corresponding cost.

If you need to watch your catering costs (and who doesn't need to watch virtually every penny), the best way to accomplish your goal is to look for options that help your caterer cut their cost by looking at each of the three primary elements of your wedding caterer's cost.