(Originally posted 5.16.12)
My biggest mistress? WeddingBee. I found WeddingBee a few months ago and have been hooked since. I love the fact that you can follow a bride from the beginning of her engagement all the way to her wedding day and recaps.
After reading through a few ladies' blogs, however, I just don't understand how so many of them pay so much for food. I've seen ranges of $20-$40 per person! Granted, they're serving 3 course meals with salads and appetizers, but I still don't understand how they can shell out that money for a guest list of 200 people!
Many of them are going with well-known restaurants or caterers that specify in weddings and large events, so I kind of understand the cost. Also, many of them are from larger cities (NYC, Dallas, L.A.) where the cost of everything is greater, not just wedding food.
I'm not trying to offend anyone by what I'm saying. I know that each couple, wedding, and budget are different. I guess I'm just sticker shocked at the price these ladies are willing to pay for food since our guests will be getting meals that are $8 per person (not including cake and alcohol.) Yep, you read that right. $8 per person.
How are we doing this? We're going with a grocery store, Hy-Vee to be specific. At first I was totally against going with a grocery store for our wedding, it just seemed like... not special enough? However, we had scoped out a few other possibilities and they were all mind-blowingly expensive (in my opinion) for not a whole lot of food.
What do our guests get for $8? Well, we had a few options, believe it or not. Originally, when looking at other places, we only had enough money to offer our guests appetizers. I hated that idea because I felt like so many of our guests were coming form out of city, state, or country that the least we could do was feed them dinner.
We started our search with Hy-Vee at the appetizer level. For $8 per person, we could offer our guests a selection of 4 appetizers. After scrolling down their list of dinners, we realized that we could actually serve our guests a full dinner for the same price! We had the options of a deli bar, salad bar, taco bar, potato bar, soup, salad and sandwich bar, a pasta bar, or a pizza buffet all for $8 per person. After some discussion, we decided that the pasta bar would be the best for our guests.
The pasta bar gets us a choice of lasagna or two pastas (fettucine, spaghetti or penne,) a choice of two sauces (marinara, Alfredo or meat sauce,) a choice of one toppings (meatballs, chicken or vegetable,) as well as a garden or Caesar salad and breadsticks or garlic bread. Sounds like a pretty awesome dinner if I do say so myself!
We're having our tasting on Saturday for our main food, cupcakes, and decisions on alcohol and other drinks. Of course there are a few more fees (such as $200 for set up and service for the buffet,) but overall, this was the cheapest food we could find that didn't sound like it came out of a hole in the wall. I just hope that it tastes as well as it fits into our budget.
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