If you are on a tight budget, it is still possible to treat your wedding guests to a nice meal. You just need to be organised and prepare everything well in advance. Here are a few approaches that you could take:
Opt for a hog roast
If you have enough funds, hiring hog roast caterers could be the way to go. A couple of whole hogs can easily feed over a hundred guests. As a result, the cost per head of serving this type of food is relatively low when compared with other types of special celebration food.
It is also possible to hire a hog roast machine for your wedding and let a friend do the cooking. You do not need to be a trained chef to cook spit-roasted meats.
The company who leases the machine to you will explain how long everything needs to be cooked for. All that needs to be done is for the meats to be loaded into the machine and for it to be turned on at the right time. Someone will also need to periodically open the machine to make sure everything is cooking evenly. Once it is cooked that same person can slice up the meat or pull it off the bone, so your guests can help themselves.
Any leftovers can be cut up, put in the fridge and served later in the evening. A pork and stuffing roll served with some sort of sauce is a tasty snack at any time of the day or night.
Order everything from your local supermarket
Another approach is to buy everything you need from local food stores. Most of them sell a good range of pre-cooked finger foods. All you need to do is to peel back the film and plate it all up on the day.
Many deli counters will prepare a range of sandwiches, sliced meats, cheeses, pates, and pies. Normally, they will lay it all out on platters and may even offer to deliver it to your wedding reception venue.
Packets of salad and crusty rolls require no preparation. They just need to be opened and tipped into bread baskets and bowls. For dessert, a range of ready-made trifles, cheesecakes, tiramisu and similar items are ideal.
Ask everyone to bring a dish
Another approach that works well is to ask everyone to cook a dish. It is far easier to organise than you may think. Nobody needs to prepare more than one item. They only need to bring enough of that item to feed up to ten people.
The best approach is to make a list of the dishes you want to be served and how much of each item you need. Bear in mind that not everyone will eat every single dish. So if you are inviting 100 people to your wedding you will only need enough coleslaw for 30 guests or so. The making of this coleslaw can easily be assigned to 3 families.
Of course, this style of wedding catering is not for everyone. But, for many families, this is the traditional way the catering is done for special occasions like weddings. If you want to find out more about what is involved, you can do so by reading this post.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.com