Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Reception Ideas - Appetizer Reception

So, as we discussed earlier, our choice of venue has created some changes in our reception structure. There is not enough space for everyone to sit at once to eat, which means that refreshments should, ideally, be things that can be eaten while standing up. Our soup-and-lasagna buffet now seems...unsporting.

So! We are shifting more towards the salad-and-sandwich end of the spectrum OR appetizers, and now the questions are:


  • How to do that?

  • How much food do we need?

First, how do we do this? Well, we are hoping to steal an idea from Meg Keene over at APW and borrow the Jewish tradition of yichud - basically, the bride and groom take 15 minutes alone after the ceremony to be together and reflect on everything. (In less elegant terms, "Holy crap, we just got married!")


So after the ceremony, we will process out through the sabre arch, and then my fiance and I will duck down a side aisle and go off on our own for a few minutes. After that, a few posed shots with family and wedding party, and then we will congregate in one of the two rooms for toasts and cake-cutting. People can have hot chocolate, punch, and desserts in the parlor room, where there will be music, or they can go out to the Narthex and eat at the tables, perhaps playing board games (Scrabble, Clue, Parchesi ... come on, that would be fun!).


And how much food do we need? That depends on whether we want sandwiches or appetizers!


For appetizers, conventional wisdom says to expect people to have 4-5 apiece, and more if there are several kinds of appetizers. If we say 7 apiece, we're at about 100 appetizers. This would be a good place to bemoan the fact that almost every catering menu I have come across switches units across the menu, "feeds 15-20" in parts, and then in other parts, "priced per piece," or, "$35.99 for two dozen." Makes it difficult to estimate things!


Nevertheless, I've whipped together a few sample menus:



  • Two bruschetta baskets (25-30 people) at $32.99, three Spinach-Artichoke baskets (with bread, serves 20-25) at $39.99, two fresh vegetable platters at $39.99, two fruit platters at $69.99 apiece (holy cow!), two apple-cranberry brie-en-croute at $46.99, two meat-and-cheese snack platters ($64.99) plus three cracker baskets ($12.99), and 60 cocktail meatballs at $23.99. This adds up to $652.84.

  • 4 orders of 50 wings at $39.99 apiece, 2 antipasto tasting platters at $59.95, 3 EACH of Pancetta-and-green-onion and spinach-artichoke-and-feta dips at $29.95, 4 orders of sliced fresh fruit at $39.99 apiece, and 4 orders of caprese salad at $47.95. This adds up to $811.32.

Thoughts? Is this adequate for 100 people?


1 comment:

  1. Gah, calculating how much food you need for so many people is hard! We're still not sure how we're going to do that, either.

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