Economic Wedding Ideas

6 responses so far ↓

• 1 dbethanid // Jan 21, 2009 at 11:04 pm

  It depends on the the place that your having the reception at. Some places have a minimum you have to spend. If your doing it at a place that doesn’t make you cater through them find out how much it would cost if just one person was eating and multiple it by 70.

• 2 basketcase88 // Jan 22, 2009 at 2:05 pm

  You’re going about this backwards. You don’t first find out how much something costs…you figure out how much money you have to spend on it, then you don’t fall in love with something that you can’t afford, but will probably overspend on because you make an emotional decision. You can spend $5 per person up to whatever you have to spend. The only “good” food and drink budget is the one you can afford.

• 3 greeneyes_bjb // Jan 24, 2009 at 10:34 pm

  You really need to be a little more specific. Are you having your reception in a park, in a country club, or something in between the two? What part of the country do you live in? A “good price” in New York City would be a “total rip off” in rural West Virginia.

  Call a few places in your area and ask for a menu or general price list. That should give you an idea of what prices are standard in your area. If you call five reception venues in your town, and they all start at $30 per person, you’ll know that it would be unreasonable to expect to pay $5 per person for food, and it would be overly extravagant to pay $50 per person.

• 4 April B // Jan 26, 2009 at 1:52 pm

  I would say depending on the place and the choice of food you could probably feed that many people for about $2500.00 or maybe even less. It really all depends on the venue, who is doing the catering, what their service charge is, taxes, etc.

• 5 Mrs H // Jan 28, 2009 at 11:40 am

  We had just beer and wine (and softdrinks) with 80 guests and we budgeted for $2000 (AUD) - We actually went under this by a few hundred - however we have a number of non drinkers in our family. If depends how much alcohol your families drink - but we also had champagne for toasts included in that. I would suggest around $25 per person (that is in AUD) would be a good limit to budget on average for drinks.

  As far as food - we spent $37.50pp (again AUD) for hors d’ouvres, a selection of 3 mains (plus an extra vegetarian meal) and a selection of 3 deserts. This was at a restaurant that we had to ourselves for 6 hours and was extremely cheap - I have not heard of anyone else before getting this price around where I live without having a buffet (we were just lucky enough to hunt out a beautiful restaurant with good prices and great food!)

  So for the whole reception we were looking at about $60 per person… but it does depend where you are and what you do.

• 6 Kelsey // Jan 31, 2009 at 9:26 am

  I’m in the same situation as you. I’m inviting about 65 people to my wedding and am on a tight budget but certainly don’t want it to appear that way. First off, a HUGE savings is to not have alchohol. I am having none, just punch and coffee. I’m renting a coffee percilater (sp?) for $20 and am using my own 3 gallon crate & barrel punch bowl.

  For the food we’re doing a pasta bar. I’m getting all of my sauce from the olive garden. I’m getting 15 pints of alfredo sauce @ $5.50 = $82.50 and 15 pints of meat sauce @ $4.25 = $63.75. I’m estimating the cost of pasta will be about $100.00. I’m also buying my salad and breaksticks from the olive garden for about $200.00. All of that food is coming approx. $450.00 which is about $6.90 per person. You will NOT find a caterer that cheap. Most catering companies start at $10 per person, and that does not include the cost of one (or more) reps from the catering company being there and tip.

  I have trusted friends (past chefs) that will prep the food in chaffing dishes so I don’t have to pay anyone to set up the food.

  My wedding cake is $215.00 which actually serves about 130 people, so we’ll be giving away LOTS of cake!

  Best of luck, I hope this info helps.

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