You’ve probably been a guest at a wedding or two and as you ate the rubber chicken dinner you made a silent promise to yourself – at your wedding the food will be better.
I know this because almost every single couple I have ever met say the same thing, ‘food is the most important thing’. This desire has to come from somewhere, and being wronged by an overcooked steak or over salted gravy is the likely culprit.
The problem is, once you have consumed over 200 wedding meals you start to see a trend. Wedding food is mostly the same.
Have we had a couple great meals? Sure – a handful of great, amazing meals.
We ate at a French restaurant at a whopping $100 a plate. And yes it was amazing, although we heard many guests complaining because the cucumber was a ball of ice, portions were small. But we LOVED it. We have had many other pretty good meals, an awesome soup here, a great salad there. We had grapes soaked in liquor and frozen, yum. We have had thanksgiving dinner, bread puddings, great prime rib.
And we have TERRIBLE meals. Meals family members made but couldn’t keep warm, vegan cocktail weddings, or just hockey puck meat surprise.
You have the very best, the most expensive smaller wedding at a restaurant meals; and you have the worst, make you throw up a little in your mouth and end with a gut gripping tummy ache. Everything else is in between, and makes up 98% of weddings – it’s just good.
This is important because of one main reason – the weddings at $50 a plate, and $60 a plate were exactly like the $70 a plate in most weddings. It seems there is only so many ways to cook food for 200 people.
Lowering you food costs at a wedding
Lowering your food cost is the one thing, after lowering the number of guests, that will save you money. So here are some tips to help you lower your food costs:
- Less variety. This can really help you reduce costs – have two options instead of three. And see if the venue or caterer will provide a couple veggie or gluten / allergy meals without a big additional cost.
- Less Courses. You could have a soup or salad – I personally love soups at weddings, it is almost always done well.
- Be Creative. You could have burgers, bbq, etc.
- Buffets are often as or more expensive than seated meals with a limited number of courses. So that won’t save you money unless you have a caterer with a reasonable buffet and limited choices. Limiting choices is a good things for humans, we actually hate choice and are happier with less selection. So you would also be doing your part in keeping guests happy, food waste down, and your wallet less bloody. Do wallets bleed? Yes, when you plan a wedding, yes they do!
- Your tastings will never be like the actual meal, because cooking for two is completely different than cooking for 200. Keep that in mind as you are tempted to spend more.
Calgary’s best wedding food
Here it it, our quick list of some favourite wedding meals.
- The Palliser Fairmont – Best buffet in Calgary
- The Lake House – And please ask for cheese wrapped in cheeses with Strawberry Mojitos.
- Bow Valley Ranche Restaurant – Chicken is da bomb and pretty much everything else
- An Affair to Remember – My favourite affordable buffet, the Chirizo Sausage is perfect
- Q – Haute – The fanciest wedding food in Calgary (cucumber ice balls and such)
- Saskatoon Farm — Awesome in every way, and check out their Mexican inspired dishes and sauces
- Bonterra — Family style is the best, and worth the smaller guest list and higher spend. Also we had a coordinator here treat us TERRIBLY, so it pains me to even put them on my great food list, but I am doing this for the chef and not the staff.We have probably missed a couple shout outs, so we will post the best food of 2017 after next season!
- Saskatoon Farm – Ok a Mexican option for your wedding — seems cool — seems AMAZING. The food here is da bomb.
Final tips on getting the best wedding food
- Quality versus Variety. How many times do I have to say this LESS IS MORE. Except in photography, and in that case more is more;). Have a great soup instead of 3 starters.
- Sauce. Seriously your food will need sauce to keep it from being dry, and dry food is the most common wedding food mishap. If you skip the sauce, shame on you.
- Soup is always safe.
- Chocolate for dessert is never a mistake (this is a totally biased opinion)
- Go familiar, people love comfort food.
As a last secret I’ll share this… the weddings with the bad food, they are all divorced. JUST KIDDING, happily married. Yup — bad wedding food won’t ruin your life, and average wedding food will taste amazing because you’ll be hungry and likely have a buzz on. Don’t sweat the small stuff people, just try not to be in the 1% of horrible and everything will be perfect on your wedding day.
And buy amazing photography, did I mention that! Yay!
Here is a link to another post: http://mycalgaryweddingphotographer.com/find-great-wedding-photographer/
Plus some weddings at the venues with great food we mentioned above:
http://mycalgaryweddingphotographer.com/bonterra-restaurant-wedding/