Help with Catering Fees

I think it all depends on your caterer! Our extra catering fees were roughly $7500 for service staff, $4500 for rental equipment, and $1400 for rental linen. We had a very formal wedding though and we used a high end caterer, and these fees were typical of the approved caterers for our venue. If you haven't hired this caterer yet, my advice would be to get some additional quotes from other comparable caterers in your area to see if this is pricing typical or not

View Quoted Comment May I ask how many people and if it was plated?

View Quoted Comment

They need to honor this then if that is what you signed for. Do not pay anything until you get this straightened out.

Hopefully this is a lesson to be diligent with venues/vendors that want to scam brides because they think they can get away anything and no one will catch it.

The more you describe fees you're asked to pay, the sketchier this caterer is. They're hoping to any higher power that you don't read the itemized fees page with a calculator and find out what they are charging.

View Quoted Comment I actually think the food and bev pricing is reasonable. Even the rentals maybe. It’s the staffing charges that seem crazy.


And from my understanding, when I saw other quotes for $50pp and $30pp for open bar and a meal, it included service and you just added the service charge and taxes. I’ve never heard of paying the labor fees, additional taxes, and fees. Even the tax rate had changed from our original contract that was signed

View Quoted Comment

The customer never pays travel fee for catering employees. If they charge you for that, get your money back and go elsewhere.

View Quoted Comment

120 guests and it was a 3-course plated meal. I would expect the service fee to be significantly less for a buffet. There was nothing about labor fees (as far as I know of) in our contract. If there was, then I guess it was under the category of the "service staff" fee

View Quoted Comment Now that I am thinking of it, we were told staff would arrive at 4pm on our original contract. We had to pay overtime charges to have someone on-site for our getting ready photos. The total time worked for that individual was 12 hours. We don’t need the staff there that early, you are correct.

View Quoted Comment So yours was a high-end three-course plated for about the same number? Did they include rental and all of that too?

View Quoted Comment

Get this resolved and do not pay a dime until it is fixed in your favor. THIS IS NOT OK IN ANY CAPACITY. If they do not honor your original agreement, run far away. Get a different caterer asap who is willing to listen.

View Quoted Comment

Yes it was a high-end 3 course plated meal for 120 guests. Rental equipment was an additional $4500 (this included all of the dishes, glasses, catering equipment, etc.) and $1400 was for the rental linen (our caterer used the company BBJ Linen for the rentals). Chairs and table rentals were separate (directly through the venue) and not through the caterer at all. The pricing was definitely a shock!

View Quoted Comment Your menu included open bar, wine service, champagne toast?

View Quoted Comment

We did have champagne as well as an open bar with top shelf liquor, but our bar package was contracted directly through the venue and not through the caterer. The service fees for the bar were several thousand dollars less than for the caterer. I took a look at what you posted and I actually don't think you're getting a bad deal at all for the staffing and rental fees. However, it might be worth asking what the difference would be for a buffet vs plated meal to make sure you're not being short changed

View Quoted Comment My fiancé thinks they are going to sue us if we drop them. I’m frustrated. They didn’t even have a force majeure clause in our contract

Does anybody have a quote or sample contract from a caterer they could share? You can cross out catering name. Just trying to collect examples to negotiate

View Quoted Comment

They will not sue you. But there is no reason to pay extra for something you will not be receiving from them. Is this caterer someone you are required to use? If not, go elsewhere asap. Don't try to get them to negotiate and cooperate now because that should have been done before contracts were signed (and itemized invoice be accurate for your event).

View Quoted Comment My fiancé is an attorney and he feels like they might

View Quoted Comment

This is an example of what we started with and as the date got closer, within a month, we worked with company to add and delete items (there was some glassware not needed, we bought our own linens, etc.). This was for a buffet brunch reception. Your company will probably add more servers if you go plated, rather than buffet. I agree that you need at least one more bartender.

Here’s ours. Not sure if super helpful because our wedding was at a hotel and all linens, chairs, dining ware, etc. was included in the per-person rate. Our dinner was a buffet.


But I agree the staffing for yours seems insane—is your fiancé afraid they’ll sue you for asking to downgrade staffing or canceling your event altogether? Have you given them money?

The staffing definitely seems off. That is a LOT of hours for a lot of staff for an event that probably has meal service occupy just a few hours total.

Unless your bartender is just doing beer and wine, they are going to be overwhelmed working solo with that many guests (that's pushing it for even just pouring bottles and opening cans). If we had more than 50 people, we had to have more than one bartender.

Our venue includes catering and nearly all the rentals in the per person charge (we need to rent linens separately, but that's it). We pay for service on top of that. Your bills seems crazy to me!