Price is an important thing to consider when choosing anything in life, and never was this truer than when choosing your wedding caterer. It takes so much money to assemble everyone for the big day, to build that marquee, to assemble those flowers, buy those dresses, hire the cars. Why then would you want to risk your catering being ordinary, lifeless, bland, wilting, late, cold and ultimately not eaten by your guests?
Your wedding is probably the biggest party you’ll organise in your whole life, and the opportunity for you to shine as people of taste; who are great at entertaining; who choose well; feed well and look after your nearest and dearest.
Choosing a caterer who you can be confident in to supply food that will be the high point of your day is really important. You’ll need to find people who do so much more than ‘go through the motions’. As a starting point, they need to LOVE food themselves, and show signs of huge enthusiasm for it – – – and that doesn’t mean someone who starts off by limiting your choices with their ‘Menu A’ or ‘Menu B’.
You need a menu that reflects your sort of wedding; your personality (bright, lively, exuberant for example); the area of the country where you are getting married (for local foods); the season (eating things that are in season, not flown half-way around the world), and these are all ways to make sure that your wedding catering really is unique to you.
To do this you will have to invest in some-one who has the knowledge, passion, and creativity (and above all, the will) to spend time crafting an integrated menu for you. They then need to skill to make this happen so that it tastes amazing, looks amazing and will be served on the day in tip-top condition.
Serving food that’s at its best from a temporary kitchen in a field with no running water on top of a Pennine is no mean feat, and never more so than at a wedding when all guests must be served simultaneously (NOT like a restaurant where food is paced with the comings and goings of diners). But its also your wedding day, so you need to have a caterer that has the project management experience and skills to bring food to perfection, precisely as all guests have found their seats and are ready to eat – and that doesn’t just happen by luck.
So, to ensure your wedding food is as good as it needs to be, you need professionals with several sets of skills that might not be natural to all caterers.
These would include:
* creativity in menu creation
* the knowledge of what’s in season, how foods go together, local delicacies.
* ability in the kitchen and time to invest in cooking all dishes, every sauce from scratch
* logistics capability,
* project management skills and experience.
With the above, it’s no wonder that you can have such price disparity between the best and the worst. We all know the difference between an old Skoda and a new 7 series BMW and both have their customers, but which would you prefer to drive?
