Food, Glorious ...

Candice, one of our Bride to Be’s shares some of her budget saving tips to help you plan your wedding. In the first of my budget-saving-tips, I started with the most likely biggest expense of your wedding – guests and food. Today I want to chat about that a little more – mainly around the issue of food. As a food blogger, this is an issue very, very close to my heart – and of course one that was very important in my own wedding.

However, as deliciously fun it may be to plan, food and reception costs tend to double simply by mentioning the word “wedding” to the managers – and that’s without the millions of hidden costs.
Here are a few you should ask about when investigating possible reception venues:

• Are table cloths and napkins included?
• Is any table décor included? (Some restaurants provide candles)
• What is the corkage per bottle, and is it allowed?
• Do they charge “cakeage”? (Sounds bizarre, but some venues will want to charge you if you bring in your wedding cake and don’t arrange it through them)
• Is all cutlery and crockery included? (Another bizarre one – a friend of mine found this amazing venue with reasonably priced food – only then to find out they charged to hire each fork, knife, spoon and plate…)
• What percentage gratuity do they charge?
• Do they have a minimum drink / food spend?

If you are looking to save money when reception and food costs, my best advice to you would be to have it at a non-dedicated function venue. Any place with a “wedding package” would have already increased their costs immensely, because they know people are generally willing to pay it for a wedding.

We chose one of our favourite restaurants in Cape Town (La Mouette) – it has very happy memories for us as a couple throughout our relationship and the most fantastic owners and food. We hired out their upstairs area – had a private bar and lounge – and had to pay no venue hire fee. It’s worth investigating this – many restaurants won’t charge you venue hire if you have a certain number of people. Our guests were treated to an amazing 6-course dinner : for the standard walk-in price of R185pp. So, do a little looking and phoning around – you’ll be surprised at the gems you’ll find!

Read more from Candice as she planned her wedding in our Bride to Be section.

Photographs courtesy of Tiffany Burnham Photography ©

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