Cheap Wedding Reception Menu Ideas

Cheap Wedding Reception Menu Ideas

We all know food and drink is one the biggest expenses of a wedding, so a cheap wedding reception menu is a must for budget conscious brides. It is possible though to have a cheap menu in your hotel, or even create your own menu if you’re doing the catering yourself. This article’s all about ideas for creating the perfect cheap wedding reception menu.

Getting the cost of the wedding food down at a hotel

If your reception is in a hotel, then you’ll probably already have set menus to work from. Just because they’re set, doesn’t mean they’re not changeable. If you’re spending a hefty amount catering-with them, tell them your budget and see if they can work to it.

A simple example is swopping a lamb or pork dish for a chicken dish, which can usually be sourced much cheaper. Another alternative is to not have the hotel dessert and instead serve your wedding cake as dessert. This works especially well if your cake isn’t a rich fruit cake.

While you’re at it, you can ask them to serve the house white and red, rather than the ones they’ve selected! That should reduce your costs by a couple of pounds per head.

Getting creative with your DIY wedding catering menu
If you’re catering yourself, then you have much more flexibility to come up with a cheap wedding reception menu. By doing something a little different, you can create a really special day that your guests will remember.

One of the best ways to save on your wedding catering is to limit the amount of different foods you serve. For example, you could consider the following:

Dessert buffet reception
Instead of serving your guests hot food, why not skip straight to dessert? You could provide a number of different desserts and offer up several portions. So if you’ve got a sweet-tooth, this could be just the thing for you.

Cheese and biscuit reception
I love cheese, so this would be perfect for me. Simply provide a selection of different cheeses, biscuits, bread and grapes for a cheese lovers delight. You could even extend it to cold meats and chutneys if you think just cheese might be a bit much.

Afternoon tea wedding reception
If you’re getting married early, why not have an afternoon tea with sandwiches and scones. This would be delightful in a garden setting on a summer’s day and kind of reminds me of Alice in Wonderland. You can prepare most the things in advance, as well as get friends to help out with the sandwiches, so it would be really easy, not to mention a cheap wedding reception!

An Indian curry
Not so much a DIY wedding catering option, but one you could certainly organise yourself. If you’re a curry lover, then why not have a curry for your wedding breakfast? Speak to your local curry restaurant (or takeaway) about outside catering and get them to serve up a delectable treat.

Just limit the choices to maybe two meat and one vegetable dish, plus naan bread and rice and you may find you come up with a cheap wedding reception menu.

Traditional fish and chips
Fish and chips wedding reception Everyone loves fish and chips and if it’s your favourite, then why not have it for your wedding reception? One bride recently wrote to me telling she’d arranged for the local chippie to provide her guests with mini fish and chips for £2.50 each. And why not?

Bring on a BBQ
Summer barbeques are great and offer fabulous food for everyone, meat eaters and veggies alike. We considered it for our wedding and were quoted £4 per head, which isn’t bad. We would have had to supply the salads and bread, but the price included the meat, BBQ and chef.

A simple finger buffet
With a finger buffet, you can create a simple cheap wedding reception menu. You can also get friends and family to help out and bring a little each. Keep it simple with sandwiches, quiches, meats, cocktail sausages, mini pizzas, crisps and dips – perfect party food.

We had a sit down buffet and you can see what we had on our cheap wedding reception menu here.