Suggestions for DIY buffet

Taco bar?

For your cocktail hour: meatballs (walmart or sam's add honey BBQ sauce in foil pan and bake hour and a half, really cheap meat thats cooks effortlessly and easily stays warm). it would also help to go w/ what your good at cooking lasagna is a favorite of mine when i am cooking for a lot of ppl. But it might not be appropriate for certain styles of weddings.

BTW: more ppl will respond if you change your avatar from the rings

You could always do pulled pork or chicken an have different sauces like BBQ to put on it, and hoagies to make sandwiches. Maybe green beans and some sort of potato dish, garden salad and call it done.

What about a non-"wedding" caterer like a local restaurant? You might be able to find a better deal there. Do you have to provide all of the plates/linens/flatware? If so you might not be saving by doing t yourself.

Potato bar?

Look into crockpot recipes because 1. No one will have to worry about it the day of your wedding and 2. It will keep things hot so there's not a problem of food poisoning.

Borrow crockpots from everyone you know... Heck go an buy a couple extra on top of that if you can afford it.

My foster mom had a great teriyaki meatball and Hawaiian weenie recipe that I'm sure is online. And then maybe crockpot pastas, rolls, and salad for the meal?

Orbit you want informality I know chipotle has build your own taco/burrito bars with the heat sources and everything

Spend less on the venue and pay a caterer.

How many guests are you planning on having? If it's over about 50, I have to caution you very strongly against the idea. I originally wanted to, at the very least, just do drop off catering and potentially do a DIY taco bar. I splurged and found a reasonable bbq place to cater, with servers to deal with it. As the wedding tasks pile up (and they will. I promise) I AM SO GLAD I DECIDED TO HIRE A CATERER. I have to yell it, because I would be out of my mind if I had to try to organize feeding 140 people that way. There's no way I would have enjoyed myself...and for all of the money and effort that's gone into this I really, really want to enjoy myself.

Http://wedding-planning.weddinginedinburgh.com/2011/08/wedding-buffet-ideas-on-budget.html?m=1 I don't know about a guest list over 50 but here is a pretty decent website with some ideas. We both love cooking and I don't anticipate much work going into feeding 25 people but pinterest can come in handy if you are trying to add some flare to your diy buffet. I think we all can agree there is nothing worse than tacky food display, I say make it look as pretty as possibly.

We're doing the food ourselves and we're expecting about 250 guests. I just posted about this not too long ago. It's a big undertaking, so make sure you're prepared. My grandpa is an award winning BBQer, so he's going to smoke pork butts for us. We're serving pulled pork, fried chicken that we're having delivered on the wedding day from a local restaurant, homemade coleslaw, mashed potatoes, baked beans, pasta salad, garden grown green beans, corn on the cob, and potato salad. As well as a garden salad and dinner rolls. It's a lot of work and takes a lot of planning, make sure it's something you can do before you decide on it.

Pasta bar. offer several different types of sauces, a couple different pasta types, Meatballs or Italian sausage in sauce. Salad, rolls, maybe a vegetable but not neccessary.

I cannot stress crock pots/keeping everything at the right temp enough

For our rehearsal dinner, we brought in Chipotle. We chose the taco bar option with two meats, beans and two types of rice, all the taco fixings, salsa, guac and chips. They provided the pans, trays, sterno containers, plates and cutlery. We picked it up from from the restaurant the day of. It was about $13 per person, super easy, delicious and totally worth it.

Definitely check in to restaurants that do drop-off catering as an option.