Catering problems

I’ve seen many venues that allow you to use a professional caterer of your choice, but never any that will allow you to make and bring in your own home cooked food. Venues want caterers to be licensed and insured because it prevents messy legal issues in the event of food poisoning, cross-contamination, etc.

It’s a lot of work and not necessarily safe to bring cooked food from home for guests. To save money, you can look into restaurants that cater Italian, Mexican or BBQ (for $10-$20 per person). Or get married at a non-mealtime (2 pm) and you could just serve light refreshments after at a short reception (punch & cake is fine or also appetizers and other non-alcoholic drinks).

Making enough food for all of your guests is a lot of work and by the time you add up ingredient costs may not actually be cheaper in the long run, throw in the risk of food poisoning and a host of other issues (like allergies, gluten sensitivity etc) that caterers are certified to deal with and its better to use a caterer or restaurant. To answer your question I have to been to a wedding where the dinner was a potluck and overall it was an absolute mess, all the guests started eating before the wedding party was done with pictures and the wedding party got left overs and what left overs were left were all cold. Overall a very poor experience and not one I would recommend

Many venues do not require you to use on site catering because they don’t have it but they do require that the caterer you do use be licensed and insured. That is for health and safety reasons so that you aren’t held responsible if anyone gets sick at your wedding. Plus you won’t have time to cook for that many people. Even if you had expertise cooking for large crowds, it’s not recommended.



Do a Google search for your favorite local restaurants and ask if any of them offer drop off catering which is a fraction of the price of regular wedding catering but they offer way better quality food and more of it without the Wedding Industry Complex Tax.

Another option is to use a service like MobyDish.com, which curates food from authentic local restaurants and employs its own drivers and catering staff.
This results in higher quality food and service at a very budget-friendly price.