S1 E12 - Catering 101: Food, Booze & Bali Wedding Bites

When you were bringing in your own caterers, say we're bringing in Drunken Love to a villa. Yep. You get so much more bang for your buck. Yeah. Because hotels, they are charging that $300 to $400K per hour, which is ridiculous. Oh my God, I would never pay that.

And the reason for that is some couples are shy. Yeah. Or they don't want to speak up. I've been to a tasting before and I've literally, as we're walking to the car, I've been messaging other catering companies to try and get in a second tasting later in the week because I could see very clearly on the client's face they weren't impressed with them. Yeah. Years ago, because they started doing in-house catering and I'd never recommend it because my experience with them hadn't been good. We now love them. They're really good. They've improved. Yeah. But there were little things like the launch party catering. Everything was over an hour late. Food was cold. The taste wasn't very good. So I'm like, why would I recommend that when I didn't even appreciate it?

But also they were really expensive. There is nothing worse having, say, vodka soda.

Yeah.

They're putting the vodka in the ice. So the ice, ice is in the glass. They put the vodka in, but then the soda has not been on ice.

And it's warm. It's warm. So they're pouring the—

it's not flat because I've just opened the bottle, but it's like— and then the ice is melting, and now you've got a watered-down drink. Hi and welcome to another episode of Bali Weddings Unveiled. My name is Britta.

My name is Tristan Moy.

Today we are going to be discussing all things catering, um, also kind of cakes and donut towers, champagne towers, all the kind of extras that kind of go into catering.

Yeah, amazing. So We're going to be doing a different topic each month along with obviously our normal episodes. So we kind of, kind of work it in order in the way we plan a wedding. So we covered off the key suppliers already. Today is going to be all about catering.

Yeah.

And I guess there's a few different aspects to talking about the catering side of things because depending on the venue you book, the catering is going to be very different.

Yeah.

So let's go through the first aspect of catering. If you book a hotel, yep, a restaurant And there's 3, 4, 5 venues realistically that have in-house catering, which is Taman Bhagawan, Puri Bhagawan, Villa Vaidas, Bali Beach Glamping, Black Noosa Dua. And then I think Andawa Cliff now, one of their— I think we get charged corkage if we take our own catering.

Yeah.

So basically if you book a hotel or a restaurant or a venue that already has existing catering, you have to use it. Yeah. There's no bringing in outside catering, so you are very heavily restricted to the type of food that you are allowed to bring into that venue. Even things like the bar, you have to use the bar from there. What's the biggest difference, do you think, between, let's say, hotel catering and just picking a catering company that we take into a villa?

You have a lot more freedom of choice. Um, hotels, a lot of them are kind of— it's their, it's their hotel food.

Yeah.

And they've condensed those menus down to, say, set menu or buffet. And you like— it's, it's good food. I don't like— I don't think I've ever disliked, say, Noosa Dua Beach Hotel's food. Yeah, that food's always been great. Even Saffron, delicious. Yeah, it's just you don't get to go out and go try all different catering companies and really, um, go into depth of what you do and don't like. Like, if you want an Italian style, like, you can go to like ABC Catering, they do an Italian buffet.

Yeah. And I think the biggest thing as well, when you go into hotels, they've got their specialties.

Yeah.

So I, even with the private venues, I just did a wedding on the weekend at Tirtha Ilawatu. Gorgeous. They only have a French menu or an Indonesian Asian menu. That's it. There's no kind of variety outside of that because that's what their chefs are trained in. Yeah. So less variety. You don't get much control over the costs because catering companies range from, you know, you can do really cheap and cheerful, $200,000, $300,000 ahead. You can go up to the Ferrari of catering, $2 million ahead, $200,000. With hotels, they all start realistically around the same price, and there's no flexibility because it's hotel pricing. And same with the drinks as well.

Oh my God, hotel pricing for drinks. Like, I always just recommend, let's do a bar tab and we'll bring in some bottles. You do have to pay a corkage. Usually it's probably around $300,000 to $400,000 per bottle. Depending on the venue, of course. Um, but pricing at hotels are just astronomical, just with the import tax and everything.

I feel like hotels don't really get the memo about the drinks packages. Like, they've just picked a number out of the head, and whether that was bigger for corporate fees, I don't know. But I just think charging someone $300K plus an hour for a drinks package is excessive, because what's the most expensive menu on a drink? It's normally going to be a wine or a cocktail. It may be $100K to $200K. Yeah. People aren't going to drink enough to warrant paying that fee per hour.

And I think that's what you kind of got to think about if you are wanting to do, um, a hotel over a villa, or villa over hotel, however you want to word that. But you, when you were bringing in your own caterers, say we're bringing in Drunken Love to a villa, yep, you get so much more bang for your buck. Yeah, because hotels, they are charging that $300,000 to $400,000 per hour, which is ridiculous. Oh my God, I would never pay that.

I think some people would because that's kind of, I guess, the norm in hotels, but I just personally, I know you get a better deal. Yeah, if we do a bar tab, we could stick a couple hundred dollars in the bar tab and it's gonna go a lot further than your drinks package.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, so going through hotels, I think the most important thing to note here is if you are getting— if you haven't picked a venue yet and catering is a big deal for you, you probably need to explore more private venues or villas so that you do have that freedom of choice. Catering. And then let's kind of talk about the different types of catering. So we've obviously got canapés, which are typically served post-ceremony. Yeah, little bite-sized nibbles that we hand out to the guests. Um, highly recommended, especially if you're doing an alcohol package, so that people have something a little to eat before we move into formalities later in the evening. What's your favorite style of venue to do?

I think recently I always love a cocktail style wedding. I think that's just so fun. Everyone kind of gets involved, you get to mingle a lot more. But I also really love the family style.

Yeah. So what's cocktail style? Explain that.

Cocktail style, basically your cocktail hour. You've got all your standing pieces, you've got some lounges, you can have some dinner tables there just for extra seating for everyone to eat, but just roaming canapés the whole night. The whole night. Um, you can even do some live stations later on for a late night snack. You can do that anyway for any of them.

But yeah, yeah, it's—

I, I like it because it kind of— yes, you've still got all your formalities, but it just feels like a very natural party progression from the start.

It's very interactive. Yeah, because you're kind of mingling, going through the tables, wandering around. Yeah, yeah. So cocktail styles, when you're picking your catering menus, one of the key things we ask is, you know, what kind of dinner are you envisioning? Is it going to be cocktail style, which is exactly what you've explain. Is it going to be a set menu? Is it going to be buffet? Or is it going to be family style? Again, family style is probably a newer concept for events, but how does family style work?

Family style, it's all the food gets put down kind of like the middle of the table. Yeah, I always recommend doing long tables for this because round tables, it's just a nightmare. Can I have that one? Yeah, sorry, can I get that? Um, And I, I just love long tables. Yeah, I just think they're very— you, you interact more with everyone around you, whereas over a long table you're talking to someone 2 meters away. Yeah, but food style, yeah, straight down the middle. You get to kind of choose what you want as well, which is fun if you've got any dietaries, then you can go for the vegetarian meal. They always cater towards all the dietaries anyway. But yeah, yeah, I like it.

Yeah, so we've got cocktail style, family style, then you've got the traditional set menu menu, which is you typically do a 3-course. We don't really— it's not often we'll do more than 3 courses in Bali because you don't really want a soup course. And yeah, a lot of people don't want the formalities to drag on for too long.

Something I've had quite a few people just wanting to do 2 courses as well because they don't eat the dessert.

So the wedding I just had on the weekend, originally we selected a 5-course meal, uh, menu.

It's a lot.

Yeah, it was. And I literally said to her, like, it's gonna be 2 and a half hours of service just for dinner. You want to be sitting for that long? She's like, no. So we cut it down to 4 courses. But I haven't done a full course menu in years. But with the set menu, it's typically, unless specified otherwise, it's going to be alternate drop, which means you'll typically pick 2 entrees, 2 mains, 2 desserts, and then it's like A, B, A, B. So the first person will get chicken, second person will get steak, third person will get chicken, and so on, so forth around the table. Um, occasionally you can put in your preferences in advance, but not many people will offer that because it is quite tricky for the catering companies coordinate, and hotels just don't want to do that.

There's not many companies that do that. I know, um, Bali Catering Company do it.

Toast maybe? No, they won't do it.

No, they won't do it. I feel like there's another company that does it.

I can't think of it. ABC, I think, do it.

ABC, that might be it.

But your seating plan needs to be very clear. Oh yeah, it's like, I just think alternate drop's a lot easier. And then especially if you've got couples at the wedding, they can swap and be like, oh well, let's share. Exactly. Yeah. And then the last style, of course, is we've got buffet. So before I worked in weddings, if you said to me buffet at a wedding, I'd be like, gross, because in my head I'd be picturing a hotel with the ugly white tables and the bain-marie. Yeah, the weddings that we do, the buffets aren't like that. No, they are very well put together. There's normally quite nice presentation of the dishes if you go with a company like Lumbung. Like, they've got those beautiful ceramic pots that all the food's served in. Yeah, buffet is always, I feel, a crowd pleaser for Bali because a lot of people might be a little bit pickier coming to a third world country and, you know, what do we eat? You don't want to get Bali belly. Lots of variety. You typically get a whole section of just appetizers, the whole section of the mains, and then later they set up the desserts. And then I guess one of the other things as well that shows up a lot on the catering menus is live cooking stations. Yeah, which is buffet style, except you'd go up and be like, I'd like the fried noodles, and they will cook them up live in front of you. So those are kind of the different menus that we have when it comes to catering. So if you— again, if you're going into a hotel or private venue, you have to work with the hotel, so you'll restrict those menus only. They might allow you to make some changes, but you're not going to have a whole lot of variety, and price-wise it can be quite expensive. Let's go through some of the catering companies and, you know, the differences in catering companies on the island. So we work with a lot. Yeah, um, you know, Amethya, Lumbung, Toast, Mimpi, ABC Catering, Bali Catering Company, Bali Good Food. M&M's. There's so many different catering companies. People are spoiled when it comes to choice, but you can only use these companies when you're working in a private venue. Yeah. So if you're getting married in a villa, when it gets to the catering side of the wedding planning, we'll actually send you through all of these different options. But first, we'll try and figure out what your budget is per head and what you can afford to spend. Yeah. Because as I said, there are some cheap catering companies, but you will see it's some very expensive catering companies depending on the level of foodie you are.

Yeah, we go high, medium, low.

Yeah, walk me through the experience. So let's say some of the cheaper companies, like Lombok, much cheaper than, let's say, Toast.

Yeah.

What would be the difference in food quality and service quality if you're doing that?

Service is— I think when I'm thinking of Lombok, I'm thinking more of the local style food.

Yeah.

So if you are wanting those rich, heavy foods of— you want the Indonesian rendang. Oh my God, the beef rendang from Lombok is so good. I think if you are one of those people that just love the Asian culture and their food and what they bring to the table, like, yeah, hands down, 100%. Toast, they're more of that Western style. Yeah, they don't really cater towards— well, they can do it, like, we'll just put some extra chili on the side for you guys, but they're not as rich heavy with the spices, if that makes sense.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

I also feel that when you kind of go for one of the cheaper companies, if you pick Western meals, they're not as flavorsome. Yeah, if that makes sense.

I always find I need to add like a little bit of extra salt or something.

Always the salt.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then we kind of go up a little bit more high-end, so the company is like, you know, Bali Good Food. Have you done a tasting with them?

I'm going next month.

So like, just put in perspective, you go for a tasting with a food company, let's say, you know, Lumbung, ABC, and all those companies. And you will typically pick a variety of canapés. So you might, you might only want 3 canapés for the wedding, but you'll typically try 5 to 6 so you can narrow it down to the 3. So I've done a tasting with Barley Good Food, and they're like, well, we didn't quite love that appetizer. And then they're like, we didn't like that one either, maybe we'd like this one. And they literally go running off to the kitchen and they make it and whip it up and bring it back if they can, which is phenomenal. I've never really seen that at catering companies. I just think the higher you get in price the better the service and the quality.

For sure. I think Al took one of my clients on menu tasting up there a couple of months ago. He's sitting over in the corner. Olivia and Blake. And I think they wanted to try something else, and yeah, they went off and looked it up, and here you go.

That's fantastic. And I think the thing as well, like, there's a big debate, like, do we need to come to Bali and try the food before the wedding? Not really. You don't have to do a food tasting. It's just a fun part of the wedding planning experience, I think.

I think if you are picky with when it comes to food, and that is like your main like, that has to be right. Yeah, you need to come to Bali, you need to try the food.

And also because we like to try them.

Yeah.

And so like, if you do come to Bali in advance, typically what we do is we send you through the catering menus. We'd say, here's the different catering companies, you need to choose one, and then you need to choose all the different dishes that you'd like to try. They will charge you for it, but typically if you book the catering company in for your wedding, they'll give you a discount or you'll get some of that money back the day. Yeah, we will typically come with them as well. And the reason for that is some couples are shy Yeah, or they don't want to speak up. I've been to a tasting before and I've literally, as we're walking to the car, I've been messaging other catering companies to try and get in a second tasting later in the week because I could see very clearly on the client's face they weren't impressed with the food. Yeah. And what the food that I like is going to be very different to what you like. Everyone's got very personal tastes. Like that particular catering company we tried that day, I personally don't love them, but we get so many clients booking with them because they do love them.

Yeah.

But I'm a bit fancier in the way that I want things to taste and look in presentation. It's not that they're bad, it's just I have different taste buds to other people. Yeah. So I think it really is really important if you can make it to Bali for a food tasting, super important. What do you think are the key things that people need to be looking for when choosing a catering company, and what questions should we be asking?

I think you kind of need to first narrow down the style.

Yeah, of your food, like buffet versus family. Yeah, yeah. Some, some companies do that very well. Some, yeah, they don't do a buffet, they refuse to. Their service is family or set menu because that's what they specialize in.

Exactly. Yeah. And I think just having an idea of what you want in terms of what kind of food do you want served on the day. Do you want more local or do you want more Western style food, or did you, did you want to kind of a bit mix of both? Like, you need to have a look through the menus, and some of them are quite good. If there's something that you see on, say, the set menu but they don't have it on the buffet, that's where we come in and we're like hey, they like, they want to do this, but yeah, can we make it into a buffet style? And some of them are actually quite good.

Most of the time they can do it. I think the only time they kind of struggle is doing it the opposite way, because something that's presented on a buffet might be very hard to plate up and do it in a set menu. Or sometimes we have had the opposite as well, because it's like, well, it comes beautifully on the set plate, how do we make that nice for the buffet? It's not going to be pretty.

I also— knowing how much you want to spend on food is really important. As we said, there's a high, medium, low, and we will pinpoint where you kind of sit on that scale. And again, it kind of goes in hand in hand where what kind of style of food do you want and how much do you want to spend on it? Yeah, I think that's very hand in hand.

I think that it is also a massive thing to consider because obviously at the start of the wedding planning journey, we give rough estimates and quotes, but we don't know what people are picking yet. If you've got 80 people at your wedding, the difference in catering costs if you choose one of the more expensive catering companies is going to be massive. Yeah, because it could be you could pick a catering company that's like $40 more expensive than one of the other ones, or what we've roughly estimated on, times that by 80. That number adds up really quickly.

Super quick. Yeah, I think especially when it comes to alcohol as well. Yeah, and choosing your bar and your drinks, like drinks are expensive here.

Yeah, so that's something I did want to touch on. So we work with realistically most the catering companies on the island, although we did try a new catering company recently. That's the other thing, we do test these companies to make sure they're good. We recently tried a new catering company and I think I can safely say I'll never use that catering company. Would you?

No.

There are certain expectations that we're looking for, obviously good service, quality of the food, that it's coming out warm, that they can service X amount of people.

Yeah.

One of the venues that we work at got really upset at me years ago because they started doing in-house catering. I'd never recommend it because my experience with them hadn't been good. We now love them, they're really good, they've improved. Yeah, but there were little things like the launch party for the catering, everything was over an hour late, food was cold, the taste wasn't very good. So I'm like, why would I recommend that when I didn't even appreciate it?

But also they were really expensive. Yeah, like astronomical.

Yeah, so they're balanced out now. So we do personally test all the catering companies, um, and we do, we work with a lot of catering companies on the island, like at least 10. Bar companies though, completely different ball game. Yeah, so every catering company can do the bar. Well, all of them apart from one. So every single catering company you book will do the bar as well. Do we recommend those bar companies?

I don't, because I don't—

if they're smaller weddings, they're under 20 people and we've got to hit a minimum spend, yes I will, but that's because I have no choice. Yeah, because I have to hit a minimum spend. But there's only two companies on the island that I'll actually recommend the bar.

Yeah, number one is always going to be Drunk in Love. Yeah. I just can't fault them ever.

Now, if you're playing along at home and you're not with the Bali Brides or Soiree Society, I'm really sorry, but you can't have Drunken Love. Um, so Drunken Love is a bar company that was actually started as the in-house company for one of our friends, Soiree Society. It was their in-house bar company, and we're very close, so she let me use them, and I will never go back. They are fantastic.

All the drinks are on ice, like, basically from the start of the day. They've got all your mixers on ice. They've got, um Soda waters are nice for us.

They bring me soda water all day because that's my drink of choice on weddings.

Like 3 or 4 limes, 5 pieces of lime, 5 pieces of lime, very spicy.

Yeah, but there's certain things that we do look for for bar companies as well. So for example, a tray, you've got at least 6 drinks on that tray, please. Like if I've got a wedding for 60 people and you've only got a couple of service staff on the floor and they're carrying 2 drinks, that's no good to me.

The amount of times I've walked past someone with 2 drinks on their tray and they're coming straight from the bar towards the guests. I'm like, can you not carry more? Like, I can.

Yeah, like, I've got pretty weak dress— dress— ribs, and I reckon I can still fit 6 drinks on a tray comfortably and wander around. So first of all, they need to be able to have good service. They need to be able to carry multiple drinks on a tray. That's essential. Second thing, and 90% of the bar companies do not do this, you must keep my mixes on ice.

There is nothing worse having, say, vodka soda. Yeah, they're putting the vodka in the ice, so the ice, ice is in the glass, they put the vodka in, but then the soda has not been on ice and it's warm. It's warm, so they're pouring the— it's not flat because I've just opened the bottle, but it's like— and then the ice is melting and now you've got a watered-down drink.

Yeah, and I can tell, like, I If I go to a bar and I have a drink, I can tell when my— because I will drink gin or bourbon— I can tell when that's been watered down. And that's because they have poured a warm drink onto cold ice and it's just melted instantly and it's watered the drink down.

Yeah.

So for me, it's really essential. The catering for the bar, they have to keep the drinks on ice. And this is probably the biggest fight when we go to hotels, because we don't have a choice on the bar catering when we go to hotels. I'm like, please put the drinks on ice, please put the drinks on ice, guys, can someone go check if they put the drinks on ice? And they just don't.

I went up to at Yanti's wedding the other day, I went out to the bar, I was like, sorry, I just want— where's all your mixers? Are they all on ice? And they're like, yes, yes. I was like, can you show me? They opened up the esky and they were.

I'm like, thank you.

And then I walked away.

I was very happy at Tiffa the other day because their bar has fridges, so everything just came straight out of the fridge. I was really happy. So yeah, drinks have to be kept on ice, not just the beer but also the mixes, the juices, everything, because it's— Bali is hot. Yeah, we want cold drinks served. Other thing for me that I really look for is they need to be flexible because for a lot of the bar packages, it's you book a package and it's 6 or 7 hours or 8 hours or whatever you've booked. So if you're getting married at, let's say, 5 o'clock and you've got a 5-hour drink package, that drink package finishes at 10. But you also want to start that drinks package from when the guests arrive. So there's drinks on arrival. I've worked with a company and guests arrive 20 minutes early and they're like, well, no, because your drink package doesn't start yet, they can't have drinks. Like, they need to have some sort of flexibility about them. And then also not sending me a bill because guests arrived 20 minutes early. Yeah, like, you need to be flexible. You need to understand that a couple of guests are going to arrive early or things are going to happen. So I think flexibility is a massive thing. But also, you know, coming up to the bar, hey, can I get this cocktail? Oh, we don't— that's not on your cocktail list, but I can see that you've got all the ingredients to make it.

Yeah.

So I think they also need to be able to do drinks on the fly as well and no obviously restaurants.

And I know why I would be able to do that.

Yeah, and that's again, so we recommend for the bar company, Always Drunk in Love and Toast are fantastic as well. I know Mimpi's starting to do the drinks packages now. I personally haven't used them. You've done a tasting, you said they were quite good.

Yeah, they were good.

Yeah, so flexibility. Also like the glassware. Oh yeah, the glassware has to be nice.

Yeah, you can't use some little crappy pieces.

Yeah, like And I know that sounds like a very strange thing, but I have shown up to weddings and I'm like, what on earth is that? Oh, that's the water glass. I'm like, it's so ugly, get it off my table.

Yeah.

So nice glassware is always a must. And I guess also just knowledge on drinks in general. The bar staff need to be knowledgeable. Yeah. Especially when it comes to— what did we have one wedding? It was a new bar company. No, it was a catering from the bar company, and they were serving Vibe. Tequila. But Vibe is actually like— tequila comes obviously from Mexico. It's a little bit like champagne. Like, they didn't have proper tequila, they were using tequila-flavored like stuff. What? Yeah, it was weird. So there's this brand here called Vibe, and they do different flavors of things, and they have like a tequila-flavored liqueur. Oh, but it's not tequila.

Gross.

You need to be smart enough to understand that that's not tequila. Like, that's an imitation.

Wow.

How—

I think we should also touch on when it comes to alcohol, um, how easy it is to get fake alcohol.

I wouldn't say it's easy, but I would say that it's very rampant out there.

Depends on your supplier.

And yeah, so we have actually had two instances at weddings using bar companies, again, that I normally wouldn't use. That one that came from the venue, they— we had to use that particular bar company because they had a contract with them. And I will never forget, the groomsmen came up to me and complained about the drink and said, you know, very watered down or whatever.

Yeah.

And so I went to the bar, it was a cocktail, it was a lychee martini. And I went to the bar and I literally picked up one that they were making and I took a sip. I was like, but now there's no alcohol in that. Yes, there is. I said, make me a fresh one. They made me a fresh one. I had a sip and I was like, there is no alcohol in that. Yes. As I said, just give me the bottle of alcohol. Poured it into a shot glass, took a sip, and I was like, that is not like vodka or whatever it was supposed to be. I don't like vodka. Vodka is probably the one spirit I hate. So for me to be able to take a sip, not flinch and not be like, I was like, open the bottle of bourbon. They open the bottle of bourbon, I had a sip and I was like, okay, that's real. Open the bottle of gin, give me a sip. That's not real. And I went through the alcohol bit by bit, and I'm not even joking, half of them were fake. I got the owner of the bar coming over. He was furious. Yeah, because obviously it's his brand and his reputation, but these bottles have come in fully sealed, look like regular alcohol, but they've obviously been swapped out for God knows what. And that's happened twice now. Yeah. So I think quality control is really important because at that event, if the client hadn't come and told me that something was off with the drinks, we never would have known and we would have been serving up. Yeah. So it's one of the things now, like, I do try to insist if we're working with a new bar company, myself or you or Yanti or something like, someone please taste a cocktail later in the evening and tell me how it's tasting so we can make sure that the quality is good going out to clients.

Yeah, we're not getting drunk at your wedding day, or just No quality control.

Although the last wedding we found the fake alcohol, I must have looked like an alcoholic because I literally was having them open bottle after bottle after bottle of alcohol and tipping it in, and I was like, real, fake, fake, fake. And I was just literally like wiping the bottles and telling them that they were allowed to stop behind the bar.

Oh God.

Yeah. So I mean, it's not—

that was that crazy wedding, wasn't it?

That was the wedding where everything—

and I was sick—

went wrong.

Yeah.

Yeah. You're welcome. I managed all the stress that day. Didn't cry though. I think you were almost about to cry. Yeah. So there is certain quality control aspects that need to go into it. And I think the other thing as well, like wine— obviously Australian Western weddings, it's very common to have a beer and wine package. Here, that's not a common thing. The common thing here is a beer, soft drinks, spirits, and cocktails package because there's locally produced spirits. So there's a Smirnoff distillery on the island, there's a Gordon's distillery on the island, so we can get most spirits pretty well priced. Wine is a different story, very different story. So lager wine, Two Islands wine, Hey, Discovery, those are the kind of local wines you get. I come from New Zealand, Australia. I'm very picky with wine. Yeah, I cannot stomach any of the local wine apart from Two Islands red, and maybe the Saba Bay sparkling wine's not bad. Yeah, the Two Islands sparkling, it's not good, and it's like $17 a bottle. Yeah, but the cheapest local wine— I mean, you can go into Dan Murphy's in Australia and pick up a decent cheap bottle of wine for like $5.

Yeah.

So if you're wanting wine at your wedding, you want to import wine— that we had wine with dinner last night, it was Wolf Blass. Yeah, delicious.

It was like $700.

It was about— it was $80 a bottle. Yeah, in Australia that'd be $20. So if you're wanting to do wine at your wedding, you need to keep in mind that the price of that is going to be quite high, and that's where your big costs are going to come in. Also, if you're wanting wine at your wedding, if you're in a hotel, you typically have to buy it from the venue or you have to pay high corkage charges. If you're getting married at a villa and using a bar company, most of them will give you free corkage and bring wine glasses if you want to bring your own wine. Yeah. But you can't bring your own wine into a licensed venue. No, because they've got to have those tax stickers. Yes, yes. Something a lot of people don't know. They're like, well, BYO alcohol from Australia. If you want to BYO alcohol into a venue, that's fine, but you must have the tax stickers. You can't just bring in your duty-free and serve it. That's not legal. I don't know how.

And the venue checks it. They do, they do. Like, we assisted a wedding at Conrad last year, and planners brought in bottles. They had bottles of Grey Goose and everything, and because it was all duty-free, they brought it in, there was no tax stickers on it, and the venue was like, Britta, we can't use this. I'm like, I know, but they don't. So I had to go have that conversation with those planners.

Yeah, so that's one of the big things. I mean, you cannot use tax-free alcohol in a licensed venue. You have to have, you know, yeah, supporting the local economy. So bar packages, there's two companies we work with realistically, and those are the certain aspects that we're looking for outside of catering. We've also got things like cakes. You know, you've got your food, you've got your drinks. Are you doing a wedding cake?

Yeah.

And then people are gonna eat the wedding cake.

No, no.

I had a wedding on Saturday. I actually— the cake at the end of the night, we gave the whole cake and gave it to put in the bridal party bus. I don't know if it got eaten. Yeah, but cake is like one of those really old school things that's traditional. So you've got the cake cutting photo I would say 80% of our weddings, the cake barely gets eaten.

It— a lot of the— we like, we've got some great companies. We've got Butter, we've got Exora. Yeah, um, delicious, delicious, so yummy. But to be fair, like, a lot of our clients, they're like, we just want to do a little ceremonial cut. So we sometimes get a bit of a cheaper cake in. Yeah, so it's totally normal now.

I think it's kind of the thing with all the suppliers, there's like a couple of great ones and then the rest are good, and then other than that, like, they're— yeah, average.

I mean, if you're super particular about your cake and you want a good cake cake. I'm like— and also a great design. I've got one in March and that cake's— I can't remember, it's a few mil. Yes, it's coming from Iksora, I think. Yeah, beautiful cake. Yeah, if you are wanting something extravagant and quite artistic and personalized, yes, go with the bigger cake companies, more expensive ones, because they're, they're great at it.

Also cater for the Western markets. I feel like their flavor range is a lot more Western. Like, Butter is the only cake company I really know of that'll do a mud style cake which is very Australian.

Yeah.

So like, even Brianna, we spent $6,000 on her wedding cake, but it was stunning. It was such a pretty cake. So cake, when you're booking a cake, I think you need to think about what it's for. Are you actually eating it? Are you going to serve it as dessert? Yeah. Are you going to take it home and have it the next day, or is it just for the cutting moment? And then from there, work out how much you want to spend on the cake. So the top-end companies, cakes are starting at $400 up to like $1,000 depending on how big the design is. But we could probably take one of the simple designs to a cheaper cake company and get it for a third of the price. So if you're not massive on the flavors and you don't think a lot of it's going to be in, you can definitely go for a cheaper thing. One of the things that I really love doing as well is a donut tower.

I love that.

Small cake on top, and then we just go to the local donut shop and we buy donuts and fill up a tower. We hire a little stand and then we decorate with flowers. Beautiful, cheap, and everyone gets a donut.

Yeah. I also love the donut walls from Dough Darlings. Oh my gosh, their donuts are so yummy. Yeah, I've got one in October actually doing that.

Yeah, I feel like there's a lot more non-traditional cake things. I— my wedding in January, we did an espresso martini tower instead of cake.

I'm doing one of those.

Are you?

Yeah, yeah, I can't remember what wedding, but yeah, yeah.

So instead of cake, we— they made shakers of espresso martinis, poured them out, and then we handed to the guests. The one thing I will say, very messy. Yeah, because when you're doing the tower, the glasses overflow, and espresso martini is black. Okay, so keep that far away from your wedding dress. And then because the glasses are so full, trying to hand them out to guests, a little bit of a nightmare, to be honest. Yeah, great for a photo opportunity but not very practical. No, same with the champagne towers, like that just goes everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, champagne towers, I do love them. I actually did one of my weddings last year, they did the grand entry into cocktail hour and they went straight for the champagne tower as soon as they entered, and then they just entered with everyone else to the restaurant.

I love when we did this at the party as well. Shot wall.

Love the shot wall.

I love a shot wall on entry into like— so what a shot wall is, guys, is you— a big wall that we hire that has little shelves on it and we fill it up with shots of your favorite drink. And it says something along the lines of take a shot and find your spot or something fun like that. And so when people are walking into dinner, they have their little shot before they go in.

We did, um, my last one with Leah, we did mini margaritas in them. That was fun.

That's what we had for the party. We had mini margaritas and something else.

We did last year, we also did limoncello shots. So you can do so much with it.

Yeah. And then something else that's really fun, we haven't done it a lot, but the champagne wall. So I love the champagne wall. It's got a little like ring for champagne with a bell attached and you go ding, ding, ding, and a little hand pops out and hands you a glass of champagne or beer or drink of choice. But like such a fun idea, interactive. I love that in cocktail hour.

We did do one last year with the champagne wall. One side was ring for bintang and one side was ring for champagne.

Did you have different bells? Yeah, we figure out the different noises.

I can't quite remember. We, we did figure it out.

So there's so many different aspects that we can do for catering. What other options are there? I mean, we've got donut towers, champagne towers. Oh, do you know what I've just had a request for? What's— it's like a French patisserie. What are they called? That's it. No, not macaroon. The other one. Croquembouche. Yes, we're doing one of those for a wedding. Fun. I'm coming. I don't know where.

My mom and dad had a croquembouche for their wedding.

Did they? Yeah. Yeah. So there's so many different alternatives. I feel like the cake is just the photo opportunity. So if you're not big on cake, you don't have to do it. Like, do something else, do something a bit more fun, spend your money elsewhere and put it into other things. Totally.

I could think of so many other things that you could do instead of a cake.

The other thing that you need to factor in when it comes to cakes as well, most hotels will charge you a corkage fee. For receiving the cake, storing it in their fridge, and cutting it up and, you know, doing that. Yeah, ranges anywhere from like $50 to a couple hundred dollars. Tia, they try to charge me a $500 corkage fee.

What?

Yeah, I argued it. I was like, no, you can't do the cake design I want, so no, I'm not paying that. That is crazy. Um, but then even things like if you're getting married in a villa and you order a massive cake, where are you going to store it? Because it's Bali, it's hot, the cake's going to melt really fast, so you have to have an air-conditioned room. So someone to accept delivery. And then little things like cake knife, cake table. Make sure you've got that sorted. If you don't have it sorted, we're going to use a cocktail table and just grab a cake, plonk it on there, and we'll just grab a knife from the catering company and wrap some ribbon around and try and make it look pretty. Like, that's our party trick. I'm like, oh well, they didn't bring a cake knife, we'll do that. Yeah. Any other catering tricks? I love a late night snack.

I love the late night snacks. I love the— even if it's not a late night snack that they're hiring from like a food stall or something.

Yeah.

But just bringing in pizzas Yeah, so we've done that a lot of times.

We've just like ordered from a local pizza shop 20 pizzas, 11 o'clock, and we'll send a driver out, or they'll send like— we'll go check it or whatever we need to do, bringing in like late night snacks for the— when especially the weddings that end up really late. Yeah, so most of the weddings wrap down by 10, 11 o'clock, but there are a couple of venues that might have an after-party room and you can go till 2, or some of them finish at midnight. And if you're eating at 6, people are hungry again late at night. Oh yeah, I had, um, we had a french fry stall and pizza stall the other night, which was really fun. That came out at Well, in the end it was 11:15, I think. Do you know what happened? So the venue that we're working at, they have an 11 o'clock curfew, right?

Yeah.

But we originally booked the after-party from 11 till 2, but when you book the after-party room, you have to move the guests somewhere else. You've got to set up more sound and like, just it's a whole other setup. So later after we booked, she changed her mind. She's just going to finish up at 11. But then I negotiate with the venue and I said, look, if I turn the music all the way down, can we actually stay until 12? And they were like, yes, as long as the music goes down to like background music.

Yeah.

I'm like, cool, that's fine. So on the run sheet, we had it all, the music being turned off basically at the same time, late night snack. So it would coincide. So like, hey guys, just a quick announcement, we've got to turn the music down now, but we've got food inside for everyone. You can stay till midnight. The late night snacks were late. So at 11 o'clock, I'm like, I'm not turning the music down. I kept the music loud to like 11:15 and the staff were like death staring me. And I was like, it's not my fault your snacks aren't ready. It's interrupting the flow of my thing. So we got away with a bit of a later curfew. Oopsies. Oops. I'm very big on, like, asking forgiveness. Oh yeah. Instead of, like, permission. Like, can I keep the music on 15 minutes? Like, no, I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna say sorry later.

So do you know what my favorite late night snack is? And this is probably the Indo in me. The Indo in me. Get it? The Indo V card.

That's my favorite one. Lumbung does it. Oh my God.

Toast do a really good one as well. Like the late night nasi goreng and the noodles. Like, just so delicious.

I just don't think I can ever get over just a late night mee goreng snacky snack, you know.

We had late night snacks at the party. It was mee goreng, wasn't it?

Oh yes, it was. Oh my God.

And that's about the only meal I ate all day. So for me, that was delicious. That was. Yeah.

Oh my God. Yum.

So lots of different things to consider. Like, and then we've also got the other aspect of things like gelato carts. Yep. Very refreshing.

Delicious.

Great option in the sense that—

Yeah, Izzy had that at her wedding on the weekend.

Oh, did you? Oh, yum. Yeah, so you can also hire in like just gelato carts where they come in with a cute little stall. We'll put a photo up in— yep, where the photos go. Um, and you can hire in a stall and you can have like 2 sorbets and 4 different flavors of ice cream, and people can go up and just get a scoop of ice cream as their dessert. Or you can do it during cocktail hour if you want something a little bit more fun and interactive there as well.

One of my clients for next year, we're doing menu tasting and everything in August. Um, but we're going to be having like a full-fledged dessert kind of station from Exora.

I love that with all the different desserts, like the little— yeah, delicious. I've got that at a wedding later this year. She's just obsessed with dessert, so we're going to have like little macaroons. Yeah, mini quiches, like not quiches, like the little, you know, the fruit tarts and all the pies and things. But yeah, her big obsession is basically that. Yeah, yeah. So excited. I love that. Any other trends in the catering world this year? Margarita tower. See, we've got Alice sitting off to the side. He didn't want to join today's episode.

Yeah, we did offer.

Margarita tower. Again, similar to like the espresso martini tower. Margarita tower, super fun.

I like that. Yeah, it's a lot less messy.

Yeah, I feel like this year the trend again is shot walls. Yeah, like I definitely feel that's a big thing. And the late night snacks are really coming back.

Oh, definitely. I just don't think you can go wrong with a late night snack. Everyone gets hungry towards the end. Yes, you eat so much food during the wedding, but when people leave and then they go home, they're like, I want McDonald's.

Yeah, exactly.

Even, even I do it. I'm like, I ate so much and now the drinking has worn off. I'm hungry again.

We need to tell Leah she needs late night snacks for her wedding.

Yeah, we do. Sorry, Leah. Leah, we need late night snacks.

And I think that the other thing that people need to consider with the catering side of things is when you have, let's say, Taman Bhagawan, Puri Bhagawan, beautiful venues, but they are venue only. Yeah. So you hire the venue, you go and you get ready there, and then the catering company and everything comes in that day. There's no restaurant on site.

No.

So if they want lunch or drinks or anything, they just need to be hired in. So we can also do grazing platters.

Yes.

So grazing platters for while the bridal party getting ready, whether it's just cheese and crackers and fruits and nibbles and finger food, or we can even go a little bit more extreme and get like sandwich platters and things as well for the preparation and getting ready. I think it's really important that everyone's got enough food. The preparation.

Definitely. I was actually going to say before, um, grazing platters, quite popular. We haven't done many recently, but Mimpi Catering does a beautiful spread. Yeah, like a massive one.

So we've done it twice, I think, at weddings.

Yeah.

The biggest problem we face is with the Bali heat and the flies. And the flies, or any sort of bugs, it's not really viable to put out cheeses and cold meats because they're not going to last very long.

Yeah, it's usually put out just in like the cocktail hour We did one, one of Yanti's wedding actually. Yeah. And we made sure it was in the shaded area so the heat wasn't directly pounding down onto it. But yeah, yeah, it was very popular. Lots of people going up there.

You know what I want to see more of? And I've seen this on TikTok. I've seen like the little charcuterie cups. Oh yum. I've been talking to Mimpi. I think they're going to start doing them where you get the little cup and inside it is like a little bit of cold cut meats and crackers and like all the little things. How good would that be?

That is very cool. I like that.

Delicious. That's my kind of like thing. I would rather that instead of a cake. Yeah, you know, years ago we actually, instead of a wedding cake, clients brought all this massive blocks of cheese and we made a big cheesecake, like made out of cheese, and then the sides were all like crackers and little dippy things.

I love that. Yeah, that's so cool.

Again, because of the heat, it wasn't great after a couple of hours, but everyone smashed it pretty quickly.

Yeah, yeah, awesome.

No, no, so catering aspect, so many things to think about. We've got canapés, What kind of dinner are you going to do? Buffet? I think the other thing that you need to think about when choosing your catering, like you've mentioned earlier, cocktails— a lot of people assume that if they do a cocktail-style wedding, it's going to be cheaper. It's not, because one, you have all the extra furniture.

Oh yeah.

When you book most— I'm going to say 80% of the catering companies will automatically come with tables with a tablecloth and all your cutlery and everything along those lines. Some of them don't, you have to hire it. So that's also something you need to check for, whether or not they include that stuff so you can budget in for it. But what people don't realize with a cocktail wedding is you need a lot more cocktail furniture and you have to hire that because that's not included in the catering company. So you're looking at an extra $2,000-$3,000 you're going to spend on furniture. Yeah. And then on top of that, cocktail catering is actually not that much cheaper than a set menu or a buffet because they need more service staff, because the service staff physically walking around rather than just standing behind a buffet and pointing out all the different foods and things.

Yeah, for sure. And one thing I've just thought of as well, um, if you are going to be doing a villa or Wonderland, for instance, they need a satellite kitchen.

Yeah.

And how is that satellite kitchen being run? Yeah. Where's the power come from? You need a generator. Yeah.

So you're gonna need a generator. You also— a lot of the companies will charge a satellite kitchen fee, which will range anywhere from $1,000 to a couple of mils. So when you're getting quotes from catering companies, check the terms and conditions to see how much the tent's going to cost you in the satellite kitchen.

Yeah.

Some places already have kind of a setup that you can use, but they still need to obviously bring in absolutely everything, and we're going to need a generator to run that. Um, so extra costs that you might incur: tables, satellite kitchen fees, transport fees. There are a couple of venues in Bali as well that charge hard access. Yes, like Kayangan Estate, you're always going to pay more there for your hard access because there's so many stairs, so many stairs. So like, it's such a trek. I think Sanctuary as well used to charge a hard access fee. So also just confirming with your catering company when you're booking what your venue is and find out any delivery fees that apply. Yeah. And then what's included from the catering company standard will be tables, cutlery, plates, glassware, and napkins, which are white. So if you aren't wanting those colors and you may be wanting gold cutlery or different colored napkins, also good to budget for that.

Yeah, and Mimpi Catering does do the gold cutlery, and I believe they're the only company that do it.

Lumbung do as well, however they charge a fee for the gold cutlery.

Yeah, so things to think about, lots of things to think about.

So that's kind of all the things that we wanted to touch on today about catering. A lot to go over. The main things to keep in mind, just to recap, is obviously hotels versus villas and private venues and the choice that you're going to have. Extra costs to look out for, what kind of menu that you're looking for, and I guess just really working out how much you want to spend on your catering before you start looking through all the menus. Because I know that our cheapest catering company is about $250K, the cheapest menu. The most expensive there, it would be close to $2 million ahead for the menu. And that again, it does really add up. Yeah, amazing. Well, that's all we were going over today, guys. Thank you for joining. I hope that was a little bit insightful about the different options for catering that you do have for Bali and for Bali and tell us what your favorite trend is. Do we like champagne tower?

We always want more trends, so if you've got any ideas, let us know.

Amazing. And we will see you in 2 weeks. I love the bubbling corn. Oh, the beach corn. We did beach corn. We had that at one wedding. We did barbecue beach corn. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. All right guys, well thanks for joining. We'll see you in 2 weeks for another episode of Bali Weddings Unveiled. Yay!