Wedding

You have never fed a multitude of hundreds or thousands before.

It is more likely you aren’t sure how to host the biggest, best dinner of your life. It is your big day, and your approach to wedding catering plays a huge role in making an unforgettable day and get your guest talking for a long time after the day.

Luckily enough, we’re breaking it all down—all the critical information you need to know before planning your wedding dinner—from the type of caterer you need to the options you have when it comes to serving meals.

It doesn’t matter if you’re after Malay wedding catering or halal wedding catering—we’ll be non-oppressive.

Let’s start from the bases.

The 5 Reception Meal Styles to Consider

After choosing a venue, the next question that brings everything into perspective is:

What food should you serve the guests?

There are fresh and different cuisines couples with a classy presentation that will leave you with a beautiful memory and your guest talking for a long time to come.

Today, you don’t need to get stuck with only one choice of wedding reception style. There are plenty of styles. Whether you’re planning an elegant traditional wedding or a small intimate gathering with your friends, there must be a suitable wedding catering style that precisely suit you.

1. The Traditional Sit-Down Dinner

Sit-down dinner is the most traditional style.  It consists of groups of 10 guests seated at a round table. Each guest is served at least three courses-the appetizers, entrée, and dessert.

The caterers present three entrée to the guest to select beforehand. Alternatively, the caterer can serve the guest with two proteins, such as meat and chicken, on the same plate.

The sit-down menu suits a couple who want elegant, neat, and traditional wedding reception.

Pros

•      A sit-down reception style allows enough time for the guests to mingle and get acquainted with each other.
•    Since you’ll submit a complete list of diner orders 14-30 days ahead of your event, the caterer know in advance how much of each entrée they need to prepare, the seated/plated is frequently less expensive than other option.
•   Each person in the table gets their food at the same time
•  It is easy to spread out activities like dance and toast in between each course to keep guest engaged and maintain the correct energy throughout the meal service
•   Even if your party starts late, your guest won’t notice.
•        As you know, the exact number of guests, you can quickly determine your budget and the quantity of food you need to prepare, so you’ll have minimum waste.
•  The sit-down arrangement also gives elegant and fancy vibes that aren’t available in the other types of agreements.

Cons

• The only problem is that you’ll need to pay keen attention to the table setting, including centerpieces and all the stationeries you might need.
•   The classic sit-down meal requires more serves both because of plating in the kitchen and serve the meal to the guest. So the staffing portion of your catering bill will be higher.
• The food options are limited to what you pick during your tasting—this readily overwrites picky eaters in attendance—there is a chance they may not eat everything on their plate.
•  If you allow guests to choose from different meal options, it will require you to use place cards and demarcate them so that the wait staff knows what meal to serve each seat.
• This arrangement is usually suitable for an adults-only wedding party. If you decide to invite children over, it will require you to provide a child-friendly menu as well.
•  The services of a sit-down diner are more expensive as every dish will be plated and carefully served.

2.Buffet-Style Wedding

Does your wedding have a more casual feel?

Couples are shifting away from a sit-down three or four dinners courses where food is brought to guests by the waitstaff and instead of having a variety of dishes served on long-sided tables, sometimes at the center, with seats available for guests.

The buffet-style features long tables with all dinner offerings in one line. Mostly, there are serves behind the buffet to describe each dish and put just the right portion on each guest’s plate.

If your wedding is quite sizeable, you can have two separate buffets with the same food to keep things moving faster.

It is correct to serve soup or salads immediately before or after the guest are seated. This presents something for people to nibble on when waiting in the buffet line.

It will require floor planning, wait staff, a buffer shelf life, and the quantity of food.

Pros

•  This seamlessly suits a couple who are aiming at providing a better variety of food and beverages.
• It well-suit a large party with hundreds of guests.
• The unique thing with this meal serving arrangement is you’ll serve more variety of food so that your guests won’t feel forced to eat something they don’t like. It is easier to fulfill the needs of a vegetarian, pescatarians, and picky eaters while at the same time give more options for gourmands.
• The service cost for the buffet can be lower because you’ll require less serving force—all you’ll need is a few wait staff to serve hundreds of guests.
• The buffet-style service also promotes mingling and interacting among guests

Cons

•   Buffet can be a messy sight with guests swarming the food stalls and disturbing the flow.
• The food can get cold very quickly as it remains open during serving.
•   It might be challenging to balance the quantity of food with the amount of dinnerware.
• There’s no limitation on how many times a guest can have the same food, popular dishes can run out many disappointing guests, while unpopular food left untouched.
•  Buffet-style requires a large quantity of food since people tend to eat more when they serve themselves which adds to your food costs.
• It might incur your some extra cost as you’ll have to rent linen, chafing dishes, and serving pieces if your caterer does not provide them.

3.Family-Style Wedding Dinner

This a mix of sit-down dinner and buffet-style reception. This mixes both the feels of formality and casualty of a wedding.

In this style, the guest is assigned to specific dinner tables and waiters to bring food to the table. Then caterers serve large dinner portions of dinners on the table for guests to fill their plates, just the way it happens at dinner at home with your family.

Although you’ll still need wait staff to serve the meal, it will overall be a smaller team.

Pros

It is less expensive as the workforce behind serving is relatively small

It is casually elegant. The family-style meal great a high middle ground as the guests are seated but served in a slightly more casual way, making it aptly suit any wedding.

The mealtime will be efficient because guests are free to start eating instantly after serving themselves.

Everyone on the table can serve themselves to as much food as they’d like.

Cons

• The style requires ample space on the dinner tables for various platter and dishes.
•  It might demand more from your budget for the rental item to account for the additional platter and serving pieces.
• The food cost might be high because your caterer will require to prepare extra food so that nothing runs out.

4.Food Trucks

This is one of the recent development in wedding food ideas where a food truck rolls up and serves your guests. It adds a hipster flair to your event.

Pros

•  You can have limitless favorite food trucks. Thus it is easy to serve nearly everyone’s interest in the event.
• It is unique. You do it right—your event becomes unforgettable in the mind of your guests.
•   Appropriate for a flexible venue.
•  Seamlessly suits weddings with a flexible dining schedule.

Cons

• Food trucks are obscenely rare that guests with traditional taste might find food trucks at a wedding flat-out bizarre.
•  Food track is expensive, though not fancy. You’ll incur the rent of each truck and its entire staff for your reception.
•  Since you’ll be dining al fresco, you might have to rent your table and chairs depending on your venue.

5.Standing Party

On this arrangement, the host serves foon on long tables, similar to buffet-style catering, but no seat is available.

This appropriately suits couples with a big wedding party overflowed with the loss of friends and relatives. It is suitable for a wedding expecting multiple hundreds or thousands of guests.

The arrangement gives more room for a huge chunk of guests and more food stalls in the same venue. The party will also feel the livelier as a guest will be going around looking for different dishes or simply mingle with some friends while eating.

The only problem is that you’ll need to ensure there is enough space between food stalls as people will be standing around even when eating. This arrangement is also less comfortable than seated arrangement, especially for the older guest and children.

Wedding Menu Ideas

Now that you know the catering arrangement that can suit your wedding style, and asked for their catering policy,  here comes the fun part:

Choosing all the food, you’ll present to your guests on your wedding day.

For years, wedding menus were known to be pretty standard—salad first course, the entrée—chicken, beef, or fish—and wedding cake as dessert.

Today, you might be looking for a Malay wedding catering to experience a wedding with a touch of Malay royalty. Or a halal wedding catering. It’s easy to feel underwhelmed by dishes you’ve seen a hundred times.

You want to serve something special—something within your budget.

The 17 menus below can inspire your reception. Choosing the right food and drink options is vital to pulling together your vision for your wedding. Below we’ll give a menu according to the reception style you choose.

How to Decide on a Wedding Menu

Deciding on a wedding menu that suits your theme, venue, and reception can still be confusing at first. Form staying within your budget to dietary restrictions, the reception menu will involve a bit more than listing off your favorite dishes to your wedding caterer.

But don’t fret. The guide below tackles all the essentials that ensure your Wedding menu is set for guests.

1.Budget

Food can get costly. It is only wise to know how far can your food budget stretch.

Make a track of all your details—the appetizer, the entrees, the desserts, the cost of wedding catering in Singapore. This will help you in deciding the wedding menu.

2.Check the Season

Different type of dishes tastes better in a different season. For instance, thick and creamy soup isn’t precisely the best fit for an outdoor summer wedding.

3.Feel Free to Have a Fusion Dish

This works excellently if you’re planning a multicultural wedding. Try to get your hands on a fusion menu, and pull a halal wedding catering with Malay wedding catering to give your friends and relative a glimpse of your spouse’s culture. With the right balance, the combination of different flavors can be exciting.

What to Consider When Choosing Wedding Catering Services

After you’ve rounded up a few potential wedding caterers, evaluation of their delivery ability here is a question that brings everything into a clear perspective:

What does one look for in the best wedding catering in Singapore?

First, there are three types of caterers out there:

1.           Those trying t sell you a set menu that they have already  created
2.           Those that will generate a custom menu  from scratch to fit you

III.            And those that do both

You and your partner must figure out which one is the best fit for your wedding. Here is what you can expect from a wedding caterer:

1.   Find a caterer that fits your style. Sometimes, the reception venue requires you to use one of their approved caterers. Ensure the listing has someone that will fit the bill of what you’re looking for or what you’re willing to compromise because the venue is so rad you would cry if you couldn’t get married there.
2.   People say tasting is the best  part of the wedding plan is somehow right./ However, you don’t expect to taste everything on every sample menu or everything in the chef repertoire—that would take eons. Don’t expect to taste what would be on your menu or the types of dishes you are looking for. The caterer might also throw in a dish you weren’t expecting that they love, and you may be pleasantly surprised.
3.   They’ll present a full breakdown of what’s included in your catering quote. This includes bar information, linen information, food cost breakdown, and any other fine print that needs to be cleared up before paying the deposit. Are you responsible for returning the dirty linen to the linen company the next day?
4.   Some caterers charge a fee for a tasting, and some don’t. Those who offer a free tasting in their contract usually offer the tasting after the couples have signed a contract and paid a deposit.

Conclusion

Planning a wedding is a different feat. Even harder is planning a wedding on a budget. When you’re trying to coordinate the biggest, most exciting event you’ll ever host, the last thing you think about is pinching.

However, even if you’re looking for wedding buffet catering or Malay wedding catering packaging, it essential to make your wedding reception flow smoothly. And choosing wedding catering services that brings their A-game not only in great tasting food but also in terms of presentation and timing will create the memories you want.