Plated vs buffet vs stations

View Quoted Comment Ooh! Good luck with it all, hope it works out well!

Plated dinner! Buffets - to ME - cheapen the event, and as someone else said, gives me that school cafeteria feeling. If I'm all dressed up, heels & fancy dress, I don't want to go on a cattle call line and walk around trying NOT to spill whatever is on my plate. I have been to weddings with 'stations', and that was just a disaster in the making.... the LINES for each station were so bad I wound up just eating bread.... seriously. We took this in to consideration when doing our budget and compromised on other things (not too hard) in order to make it happen. People will read what their choices are (3) on our website so I'm not worried about them no finding something they like.

We didn't have much of a choice--my husband is immunocompromised, plus CoVID is still a thing, so we had to do plated. We can't risk a bunch of people breathing on my husband's food, so we couldn't do buffet, and our county had a mandate that anything other than plated at larger events was prohibited.

The cost is what it came down too. We saved a few thousands on staffing because we were having a buffet. Plates need additional servers and staff. If it wasn’t a money option we would’ve chosen plated. The funny thing is it’s the same exact meal. Our vendor doesn’t have a low budget buffet menu only option. You can have your choices plated family style or buffet. So it worked out great.