Weddingbee Blog

Food. That simple four-letter word became the center of our universe for a few weeks early in the wedding-planning process. Mr. Ticket and I knew we wanted good food and lots of it for our wedding guests. (Both our families will judge our wedding by the food we serve and we know that.) That being said, good food doesn’t come cheap (or so we thought!), and with an estimated 85 guests coming we needed to find a caterer that both worked with our budget and had something tasty to offer.

I called dozens of caterers, including a few I had worked with in the past, and the numbers we were getting scared me to my core. At $45 a head plus tax and service charge, NOT including drinks, rentals, or cake, we were looking at over 40% of our budget going just for food.

Image via Dailymail.co.uk / From the movie Psycho

This was a bit too much of a stretch for us since we had already decided to splurge on the venue of my dreams (25% of our budget) and the best photographers in SoCal (14% of our budget).

I went to our WC and asked for help. She gave me a list of caterers that were closer to our budget that she had either worked with or heard good things about. A few days later, I sat down and started calling people. I liked the first one I called right off the bat; he seemed quite flexible and willing to work with us on cost and the type of food we wanted. We set up a tasting for the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

He normally meets with potential clients at their venues, but since that wasn’t an option for us he met us at my parents’ house. He came with enough food to feed a small army! I was starving and Mr. Ticket was holding back drool from how amazing everything looked. Attempting to behave like a rational adult, I calmly waited for the caterer to present everything to us, but once he asked us to dig in, all bets were off. He loaded our plates with a little of everything. From the first bite to the last, everything we tried was AMAZING. (OK, we didn’t like the green beans almondine, but really everything else was superb.)

This company provided all the flatware and dishes, linens, coffee, and punch station, along with food for a price that was well within our budget. It was so in our budget in fact that we were able to choose to have a chicken as well as a beef dish AND spring for the package that included apple cider for the toast (which we had already planned on doing instead of champagne so as not to offend certain family members), cake cutting and serving, and two hors d’oeuvres. And by hors d’oeuvres I mean potato skins and meatballs. (And yes we are very excited about those rather non-classy but extremely tasty options!)

Image via Closet Cooking (an AWESOME cooking blog)

May I just say both Mr. Ticket and I are absolutely stoked to be eating this food again at our wedding! So we signed a contract within a few days and sent in our deposit. Our official wedding caterer is…Royal Court Catering! Oh, and one more added bonus…because we signed our contract before the end of the year (2010), our caterer threw in a free chocolate fountain. The words FREE and CHOCOLATE in the same sentence?! I’m still in wedding-caterer heaven.

Did you have a fantastic first tasting, or did it take you a few tries to find the right caterer? How important was food to you and your SO?