Wedding Catering For 100 Guests

I'm doing my own wedding catering and I'm planning to do a cold buffet. How do I calculate the amount of food required for 100 people?

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Answer:

First of all, you should decide on the type of food you're having, i.e. salads, finger food or sandwiches and the variety of food you're want. Some people want to provide a bit of everything (i.e. lots of different small snacks), whereas others provide a few dishes but in large quantities. Obviously, the latter is simpler as it requires less planning and cooking! So choose what you want to eat and then go from there.

There are a couple of good rules to follow when catering for large numbers. The first is, that you should provide plenty of 'filler' foods such as carbohydrates. Potatoes (baked, boiled or salad) and bread are great fillers. People will stock up on these as most people are used to having a reasonable amount of carbs in their diet.

The second rule is that just because you're making a particular dish, you don't have to increase the quantity so that it serves 100! With a buffet, most people will only have a little bit of everything, not the usual portion size – they'd never fit it all on their plate! So you should aim to cater for much less.

For example, we did several salads for our buffet and each of the recipes served 25 people. Instead of increasing the quantity by 4 to serve our 100 guests, we only doubled it. We then served several salads to provide a variety of different flavours and textures. By the way, we chose salads as they can be prepared in advance and stored in a fridge, which meant virtually no cooking on the day. You can find details of our wedding buffet here.

If you're buying pre-made food such as vol-au-vents, pizzas or other finger food, remember that not everyone will have everything. I would recommend buying enough items so that you end up with 2-3 items of finger food per person. This is based on the assumption that you will be giving them some good carbs too (i.e. sandwiches, potatoes, rice salad, pasta salad or breads).

The best thing is to try and strike a balance, but first of all, you need to decide what you type of buffet you want. Remember, virtually all finger food will need to be cooked before the day – so be prepared!

I hope that helps.