Fall wedding menu help?

Question

We have a really tight budget, are doing our own food, and know nothing about catering. Our wedding is in September and it will be about 150 people. First of all, how diverse of a menu is necessary? We were thinking a bread, salad, a meat, a pasta, 2 vegetables, potato and/or rice, fruit and cake. I was told we should have a soup too, but is that too much? It's being served buffet style. Any ideas on specific foods to serve? We are vegetarian, but very few others are. Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Hello, i am the executive Chef at a hotel where i live. We do weddings all the time. Without knowing your budget i can't give you a specific menu but, here are some basic catering guide lines.

Having two veggies is nice but, usually it is cheaper to go with one veggy and two starches. I'd say have some nice steamed or grilled asparagus, rice and A potato, scalloped is really good for big groups but, mashed is good too and easy.

For buffet style, you will want to prepair food enough for 10% more portions than the number of people.(this is for the double portion people and the second helping folks.)

For the fall it is nice to have a soup depending on how cold it is. I would do one or the other, not both salad and soup. The reason is that the price of fresh veggies are getting higher in the fall. And with a soup you can select the cheapest veggies IE squash or potatoes that are in season around this time of the year. Besides most banquets i do rarely they will have soup and salad. You will just end up wasting more food that way.

For your meat, i'd say chicken is the best way to go. Chicken breast is easy to come by and is cheap.

If you want to go with fish, Tilapia is a cost effective option, as is farm raised salmon. But most fish will still be about three times the cost of chicken. Beef is pretty pricy and is more difficult to prepair.

How diverse??

Bread, Salad or Soup, Meat, Veggy, two starches Vegetarian pata, fruit and cake is a good spread. Appetizers are something you might think about. This is common for a wedding on a budget. Usually when we do a wedding they have two options for "center of the plate" food. Sense you are vegetarian the pasta will be the veggy option and the second entree.

If you were asking me to recomend a menu, I'd say

-Spinach Salad with Dried cherries Roasted tomatoes and balsamic vinagrette(if you go with a salad)

-Butternut Squash bisque (if you go with a soup) This can be prepaired vegetarian.

-Rosemary Roasted Chicken Breast  

-Pasta primavera

-Scalloped Potatoes

-Wild rice

-Asparagus

-Rolls

-Fruit Platter

-And Cake of course

This is a pretty basic menu that alomst anyone can prepair and will not take tons of time.



If you would like to contact me for recipes or more menu ideas you are more than welcome. I have lots of awesome vegetarian recipes if you want that to be the main course.

Answer 2

wooow u go girl. doing ur own food is great. i mean whats the point in pending hundreds of pounds for someone else and they are gonna eat it newayz. i fink ur menu sounds fab right now. i would include soup. one meat and one just plain (i.e tomato) just to finish it all off. i would come to a wedding serving food at least i could pronounce.

Answer 3

I would pass on the soup.

I went to 5 weddings last year, mine included, and not one of them had soup.

The thing with some wedding vendors is they try to push a lot of useless extras on you, that you really have zero need for.

Answer 4

Do not do soup.  I don't know where you live??  If you live anywhere near a culinary school, reach out to people there.  If you put up a poster or something asking someone to design a menu for you, they will and maybe for free.  They have to dream up stuff like that for grades, why not help you at the same time and put it on their resume??  They might even write recipes for you, I did this when I was in culinary school.

Answer 5

first of all it is YOUR wedding make sure it is food you like... and since you are vegetarian you might want to ask family who isn't vegetarian what kinda meat they would like to have... since they will be the one eating it... the menu you describes sounds good.   I wouldn't worry about a soup, unless you really want one..  the purpose is to celebrate your marriage, and family and friends will and should be happy with what ever you serve....  congratulations I hope yall have a wonderful life together.... try not to stress over the menu to much... I am sure what ever you decide will be wonderful !!!

Answer 6

I worked at a banquet hall for 6 years.  The basic menu for most wedding receptions held there consisted of:

Rigatoni (meatless)

Plain garden salad (lettuce, 1 wedge of tomato and 2 slices of cucumber per individual bowl-we served it to the guests before going to the buffet) topped with italian dressing.  Kept it simple.

Augratin or scaloped potatoes (can be purchased in a large box and you get 1 long pan per box-only have to add water and butter to mix,  1 box serves aprroximately 35 ppl).

Green beans (also can be purchased in #10 cans or 5 lb bags at Sam's or we have a store called RSVP or GFS stores.  Season to taste with ingredients like salt, pepper, a bit of garlic and butter)

Corn (same as above)

Beef tips (can be purchased in a large piece of meat-talk to a butcher at Sam's, they can be a great help and can let you know how much you would need and cut to order-saves time and money)

Chicken b*****s (could do an easy lemon picatta to go over top of b*****s-add dried parsley for color.  Chicken baked in the oven.  Just add a bit of paprika, parsley flakes for color before baking.

Fresh fruit-watermelon, canteloupe, green and red grapes, pineapple.

Rolls and butter

Cake-again check out Sam's bakery.  They do wedding cakes, supply the stand and are cheap!  They also taste good.

Appetizers can be something as simple as m&m's, peanuts,

cheese and grapes with crackers.

I wish you the best of luck together.