Did you guys taste your caterer before booking? or after?

Nope if she can't hold a date move on. If she can't get you in for a tasting, move on.

I recently booked with my caterer and our tasting isn't until Jan. However, their prices are going up and if we booked before Nov. 1st, we could use 2016 prices. With that being said, he did include a clause in the contract that if we get to the tasting and decide we don't like the food or whatever, we can get a full refund of our deposit. So I feel really safe with them. They have high reviews and were recommended highly by the venue itself.

Does she require a deposit with the contract? Maybe she can include the same type of clause, that you can get your deposit back if after tasting the food you don't like it. Maybe you can ask her?

Our tasting was included after booking. I had been to a different wedding related event a couple of years prior at the same venue, so I had eaten their food before and it was one of the reasons I wanted to choose the venue.

Our tasting is early next year and we booked our caterer in August. I'm not worried though - they came highly recommended and have outstanding reviews. Plus my venue coordinator has worked with them numerous times and said they are one of her top recommended caterers.

I won't be tasting until after. Our venue works only with one caterer, so I don't have a choice! I've heard nothing but great reviews from many sources so I wasn't too worried about that.

I did a tasting before booking but if you are sure you want to use them, I would lock down the date and book it and then do tasting to figure out your menu.

Ok so it sounds completely normal! If you taste after you book - is the tasting an additional cost?

We went to the restaurant at my venue (all catering is done through the venue) and had an amazing lunch before putting down our deposit. I wouldn't have felt comfortable without knowing what the food was actually like.

I did a tasting first and then decided which vendor to go with but after reading above posts - sounds pretty common to taste after booking.

We had to go with the in house catering and were not able to do a tasting, which I'm kinda meh about. They have good reviews so... idk we'll see lol

Our venue was all inclusive including catering, so we didn't do a tasting until after booking. Reviews were amazing and our guests were raving about the food afterwards (like, weeks afterwards.) So it worked out for us, but it was definitely a risk!

Technically yes. Our venue was all inclusive and you don't do the tastings until after you book...but we got around that because we had attended a wedding there about 6 months before we booked so we knew the food was delicious!

We booked and then tasted. But we were familiar with the company and had been to weddings where they catered. A lot of companies do 1 big tasting where they invite multiple people to the tasting. The ones we got invited to, that we did not book, we did not have to pay for. If you are certain this is the caterer for you I would book them. You do risk losing the date by not booking right now, but how big is the company? My caterer had 7 other weddings the night of my wedding. My coordinator says they can do 18 events in 1 day. Seems like a lot of the bigger companies can handle more than just 1 wedding a day.

Our food is included in the venue so we dont have a tasting until after we booked, but I heard great things about the food so i am not that worried.

Our venue doesn't provide the tasting til after booking and most other places we looked at where the same. We did only look at venues that included the catering though.

Our venue had in-house catering only and you weren't able to book a tasting until you were within like 5 or 6 months of your date...but they book weddings over a year out, so we had no choice if we wanted the venue. I did a ton of research on reviews and just had to have faith that the reviews were accurate. We were so relieved after the tasting though!

Our venue provides the food, and we booked there before tasting.

We tasted our food way after booking, but we knew we had to use the venue's caterer when we booked!

Ours was after booking. Our venue only offered 3 choices. 1 was WAYYYYYYY out of our price range, 1 was sonny's bbq (which I love, but not for our wedding), and the last choice was a very reputable caterer with nicer *more wedding like* dishes.

So we booked with them and then did the tasting and their food is SOOOOO yummy!

Our venue has a restaurant, the catering is done by the restaurant which has amazing reviews, so we weren't worried. After we booked, we immediately went to the restaurant for dinner, it did not disappoint. We are having our tasting in February.