How To Handle Wedding Catering Types - Pros & Cons | Wedding Q&A

Well, hello lovely humans and welcome to Engage, a wedding planning podcast for the modern day couple. I'm your host, Jamie Wolfer, and I truly believe that wedding planning does not need to be complicated or time consuming. I kind of picture these episodes like jumping on a quick phone call with your wedding planner. You get your answers and you go on your merry way. Because sometimes not all of us have an hour to dedicate to listening to super long podcasts or super long intros. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Today's episode is going to admittedly be a little bit all over the place. You see, every single month I sit down with the people over in the master plan course and answer your questions in Lifetime. So if you find yourself struggling and really need to sit down and speak with a real life wedding planner, I would love to be a part of your wedding planning journey. Join us over in the master plan today to get your questions answered. Until then, take a listen. Tess said we are wanting to serve pizza for our reception. Advice on how to nicely serve it while keeping it hot on the table. I'm having difficulty finding pizza trays with a heating source that look presentable, elegant. What are some other tips on serving pizza that we may want to keep in mind? Okay, two videos for you that might help if you want to follow up on these later. Is wedding wedding catering. The different styles and pros and cons and then DIY wedding food. So couple questions for you. Follow up questions because I'm not quite sure I need a little bit more information. Is it coming all at once? Like are you having it delivered from Domino's or what are from a local Italian restaurant? Is it like that or is it wood fired or being cooked on the spot? If it's being cooked on the spot, you do not have to worry about keeping it warm. Okay. Guests will come up, grab the pizza and keep moving if it is being delivered. I don't think there's a way of keeping individual pizzas warm. What you can do is rent a big warmer, which is not cute, not aesthetic. It's not demure, not mindful, it's not cutesy. Oh, is anyone else on that? Just me. Okay, so if you have them in a warmer, it will keep boxes warm. Yes, but ideally we'd have someone to be able to take those out and place them on the table as the pizzas become become consumed. As the pizzas are eaten down, you want those restocked. Unless you're thinking of having them at individual tables. If that's the case. Just make sure delivery is as close to your reception time as possible and someone passes those out, ideally a staff member. So it in order to make this as successful as possible I would recommend and again this is if budget is we got this covered, I would rent a warmer. I would then have someone there to refill the pizza buffet. Whether that's and you could you could hire servers for pretty inexpensive. Sometimes it's a two server minimum for a four hour minimum. Anywhere from 25 to $35 an hour. Could be a little bit more given inflation now but you could have a couple people there and then the nice part is even though they have a couple hours minimum, they can help you with busing tables afterwards, which is such a huge help if if you're doing the DIY end of things. So for not a big added cost, a lot of people overlook this. You can have them stay warm in the warmer. Again, I don't really know how much those cost. I think it might vary on where you're at and then be plated or set out on the buffet table so people can keep coming up and having hot pizza. Sitting here listening to a podcast is all fine and dandy, right? But sometimes you need an actual person to be asking some of these questions to and you may be sitting there going, you know what, Jamie? Actually yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. I would love to be able to ask you these questions. Guess what? You need to join the master plan. You've heard me talk about it, but do you know why I love it so much? You get over 10 lessons that walk you through planning your wedding with videos and spreadsheets and other detailed resources. Along the way, join me and my virtual clients over in the master plan and get all your wedding planning questions answered. Literally thousands of couples have gone on this journey with me and I'd love for you to be next. Check it out@wolferenco.com tmp that's wolferandco.com tmp Listen, wedding budgets suck. They're just like the actual worst and the hardest part for me is that weddings are not cookie cutter. They're not one size fits all. And I think it's important to make sure that you're budgeting according to your priorities. Build a budget that works with your vision and you'll be on the path to planning a wedding that you really want. So if you want my recommendations for making your perfect budget for you and your partner, head on over to wedding priorities.com Our wedding is a week from Saturday and My brain just won't turn off. Oh, Ellen, I'm so sorry. Tipping question. I am reading that standard tip for caterers typically 15 to 20% of the bill, but mine includes labor service charge, commission, etc. Is it inappropriate to tip based solely on food and beverage? I don't think so. I don't think it's. Yeah. Especially because a lot of that's just like, yeah, I see where you're coming from. Commission. That's always hard when you're looking at a catering budget and you're like, all of this feels like it adds up. However, it's all administrative hours. It's all the amount. It's not just paying for the food, it's not just paying for the chef, paying for the office and office staff, etc. So that's what the labor service charge, all that is included in that. I see where you're coming from. I think you are well within your bounds to do 15% of the. The food and potentially labor part of it. Yeah, I think you can make some cuts to that if you want to. We do have a whole video on tips on tipping and a guide if that helps. But I haven't had anyone get this specific on that question, so I don't think you're going to find a specific answer on that. So hopefully the verbal response I just gave you helped. For my daughter's wedding, during the Father daughter dance and the Mother son dance, we will. We want to have a slideshow playing of the bride or groom growing up. The screen will be in the background or side. Have you seen this done before? Tips or issues that we should consider? I have definitely seen this done before. It's freaking adorable. Here's what ends up happening. The people dancing want to stop and kind of watch it. So they end up kind of swaying back and forth together just staring at it. And it's cute. So cute. Do a dry run. Make sure you have all of the chords that you need. I would have one person in charge of this slideshow. It sounds like it's for your daughter's wedding. Ideally it wouldn't be you. So you can just be present and in the moment. You don't have to worry about pressing play because this is also going to be super emotional for you. Right. So I would see if there is, you know, a sibling or cousin or sibling of yours that you can show everything to do a dry run of beforehand. Make sure all of the plugs work. And I would be very particular in asking those questions of the DJ because you're going to make sure the music is piped through the sound system. So talk to the DJ first. Who knows, he or she might be willing to press play for you and just be like, yeah, oh, just bring me the laptop or send me the video and, and the music and I will get it playing for you. And if you have a projector, I will get it connected for you. So if you have a good professional dj, this might be a lot easier than diying it. If you are diying it, then you have a few more questions to ask. If you're plugging in, you have questions to ask. So I would recommend dedicating. And this is gonna sound like overkill, dedicating at least 30 minutes to making sure the slideshow is fully ready to go before the ceremony even begins. So again, if you could pass that off to someone else, that'd be good because your emotions are gonna be pretty high wedding day, as well as they should be. It's a really big day for you too, so pass it off to someone else. Practice beforehand. Connect with the DJ and literally make sure your connections work. Be very specific on what you need. What do I need to be do? What cords do I need? Do you supply these? Can you help us with this? Dear dj, Is that. Does that fall under your purview? Because it could be one of those things where you're just like, yeah, totally fine, I got this. I do it all the time. If you are struggling with wedding planning and you have questions and you just need someone to listen and to chat with, come join us in the master plan community over@themasterplanwed.com I would love to have you in there. Thanks so much for listening. If you haven't done so already, subscribe, subscribe. Jump on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave a five star review so we can let the podcast people know that Jamie knows what she's talking about sometimes. And until next time, bye, guys.