8 Steps to Find Your Perfect Wedding Caterer
Photographer Credit: Alice Ahn Photography
If you aren't already excited about creating your wedding menu, I assure you that you will be by the time you finish reading all of our tips and advice!
Here are Love Letter Weddings, we are self proclaimed "foodies" and find so much joy in working directly with our clients and our favorite chefs to create custom personalized menus for each event.
We find when most couples begin the process, they aren't quite sure where to start.
Photographer Credit: Taimane Kini
Here are the steps we recommend you take to find your perfect wedding caterer:
Do some research! First, you will want to ask your planner, family/friends, and/or check out review sites for top WEDDING caterers. It is super important that you are looking into caterers who have experience with weddings or other large events where presentation and service is important. There are a lot of logistics involved, so make sure that you choose someone who knows what they are doing so you don't have to try and figure it all out yourself!
Read this awesome blog post to learn all the things you should be thinking about when it comes to your menu and the style of service you prefer.
Think about what you want to serve at your wedding and what your goal budget is for everything catering (appetizers, main course, dessert, servers, bussers, chef labor, clean up, etc.)
Download and fill out this worksheet to share with any caterers you are considering.
Reach out to 2-4 caterers that you are interested in for availability and to request a custom menu and proposal based on your worksheet info.
Once you get all the proposals back, review them for total cost and overall appeal of the custom menu. Keep in mind, you can request menu revisions to refine or fine-tune the menu with each caterer. It is typical to do this 1-3 times with a caterer before locking down a perfect menu.
Once you have the menus as close to perfect as possible, schedule tastings with your top 1-2 choices.
Book your caterer!! Make sure when you commit to a contract, you are aware of what costs would be for your max guest count, but sign for the lowest anticipated guest count.
Photographer Credit: Stephen Ludwig Photography
I hope these steps are helpful and make the process of booking your caterer as seamless as possible.
