We’re planning on self-catering our wedding with the help of some family and friends. However, information on self-catering a wedding is hard to come by! Tips for self-catering your wedding are typically general and useless. Um, really, thanks. I didn’t know that I “should ensure that I don’t leave food out for too long.” or that I “should enlist the help of friends,” or that I need to figure out how to transport the food. Like this
No. Someone tell me how many salt and pepper shakers I should have. Where can I rent industrial coffee pots? How much coffee do I need to buy? How many trash cans do I need? Who will EMPTY the trash? I don’t even know what I don’t know so I don’t know what questions I need answered (hmmm, that sounds like a Donald Rumsfeld quote).
So, I went on a big search for information on self-catering a wedding. This is the best of what I’ve found. I hope it helps other brides who want to self-cater their wedding.
- This nine-part series over at the Forkable blog is by far the best I’ve ever seen. And it comes from someone who has actually self-catered their wedding! (Scroll past the broken flickr link), but as a shortcut, here are the links to each of her posts from her indexed page!
- Don’t be fooled by the *ahem* old website design and angelfire link (that ranks right up there with Geocities and Tripod! Rememba’ them?). This is one of the most useful sites about self-catering a wedding that provides that really, really nitty-gritty stuff. Like, how much butter do I need for 120 dinner buns? And how much lettuce do I need for salad? How many pounds of fruit do I need for a fruit salad? I’m not sure if this website is still maintained and if it’ll ever be taken down because it’s not maintained, so I have captured all this information on my hard drive.
- This site (again, it’s old) is like the above mentioned website, but gives even MORE nitty-gritty detail. (This is another weird link, but full of amazing information. If it gives you an error, just click continue!)
- Bar Guide for 100 people. This includes liquor, so I would assume that if you’re just having beer and wine, that you may want to up the quantities a bit.
- How much food it takes to feed 100 people (but not all at once of course!) This is useful in helping you figure out how many pounds of chicken to buy or how many heads of lettuce you should buy
- Sara over at $2000 Wedding provides an overview of self-catering her wedding as well as some tips to readers who have written to her. Again, this one comes in the form of a detailed series of posts
