Weddings are the one event where the catering is discussed for a year and then compressed into ninety minutes that nobody controls. Almost every complaint afterwards traces back to that squeeze rather than to the menu.
Speeches and service are in direct competition. Courses cannot be plated while a room is listening, and a kitchen holding food for an unplanned twenty minutes is a kitchen serving worse food than it cooked. Decide the order early, tell the caterer, and tell whoever is holding the microphone.
The three formats are honest trade-offs, not tiers. Plated is the most controlled and the most staff-dependent, and it fixes the guest in a seat. Buffet moves faster, costs less to serve, and produces a queue you have to design around. Stations keep a room mingling and are the hardest to portion, because consumption is genuinely unpredictable. None of them is the upgrade; they suit different evenings.
Guest numbers drift, and they drift late. Final counts move in the last fortnight, and the gap between the number you booked and the number who came is the most common cause of running short. Give the real number rather than the hopeful one.
Feed the couple. They are photographed, moved, congratulated and introduced, and they routinely eat nothing at their own dinner. A plate put aside, somewhere quiet, ten minutes protected in the schedule — it costs nothing and it is the single most appreciated thing a caterer does all night.
Dietary requirements collected on the RSVP and passed on in one list, not in forty messages the week of, is the other thing that makes the day work.
