It's no se­cret that when­ev­er Tri­nis go to any type of event, the main con­ver­sa­tion top­ic af­ter­wards (and dur­ing) will be about food. The same rings true at wed­dings. The va­ri­ety, quan­ti­ty, taste, and even the pre­sen­ta­tion of your food will no doubt be cri­tiqued by your guests.

Here are some ways to man­age your cater­ing bud­get and still get rave re­views from your guests:

Por­tion con­trol–Be­lieve it or not, buf­fet sta­tions can some­times work out to be more ex­pen­sive than plat­ed ser­vice. This is be­cause a buf­fet re­quires more staff to pre­pare and serve it. It al­so re­quires serv­ing pieces, linens, d�cor, warm­ing dish­es, and larg­er quan­ti­ties of food. Buf­fets al­so re­quire con­stant su­per­vi­sion and re­fill­ing.

An­oth­er fact about buf­fets is that when­ev­er guests are al­lowed to help them­selves, por­tion con­trol can go hay­wire! This is be­cause peo­ple tend to eat more and waste more, at buf­fets. A cheap­er al­ter­na­tive may be to have passed hor d'oeu­vres for a cock­tail hour rather than have an ap­pe­tiz­er buf­fet.

Ap­pe­tiz­er ap­peal–You can save cater­ing dol­lars by sim­ply se­lect­ing the types of food you want served and when, for ex­am­ple shrimp, salmon or steak will cer­tain­ly cost more than chick­en. How­ev­er, you can still serve at least one of those dish­es by hav­ing it made in­to an ap­pe­tiz­er, in­stead of a main course.

Know how to bud­get for desserts–Typ­i­cal­ly, guests will have about one to three serv­ings of dessert. You can of­fer one slice of cake, tart or pas­try and al­lo­cate ap­prox­i­mate­ly four ounces of a creamy dessert, such as ice cream, sor­bet or mousse. If you will be serv­ing nu­mer­ous desserts, you can serve small­er por­tions. Can­dy buf­fets, ice cream sta­tions and choco­late foun­tains should have full-time at­ten­dants to as­sist guests and help with por­tion con­trol.

The fam­i­ly-style trend–This type of ser­vice oc­curs when dish­es are brought to each ta­ble and guests serve them­selves. Nat­u­ral­ly, this trend cuts down on the need for as much wait staff and lends it­self to more in­for­mal wed­dings. If your wed­ding is more for­mal but your would like a "homey" feel to the food, serve tra­di­tion­al one-pot dish­es such as pael­la, lasagna and casseroles.

Try a theme–More re­laxed food themes such as Bar­be­cue or Mex­i­can Fi­es­ta, can be quite eco­nom­i­cal. These themes work well in terms of guests serv­ing them­selves–for ex­am­ple, you can set up a taco bar or a mashed pota­to bar, to ac­com­pa­ny your bar­be­cue.

Time man­age­ment–One ma­jor way to con­trol your bud­get is to con­trol the du­ra­tion of your wed­ding. The fact is that the longer guests re­main, the more they will con­sume! One idea may be to have a cock­tail re­cep­tion, fea­tur­ing ac­tive sta­tions, that lasts three hours, ver­sus a cock­tail hour, fol­lowed by a sit-down din­ner and dessert that can last five hours. If you can­not tweak the time at all, then try to an­tic­i­pate which foods would be the most pop­u­lar and or­der more of these se­lec­tions.

Qual­i­ty ver­sus quan­ti­ty–Why not swap the tra­di­tion­al five-course meal for a three-course meal? If you cut a soup or sal­ad and an ex­tra dessert from a pre-set menu, many guests would not mind (or even no­tice!), es­pe­cial­ly if they have had an ex­cep­tion­al three-course meal. You can al­so use good-qual­i­ty "filler" food, such as breads, savoury pas­tries and fresh rolls to help fill up your guests' tum­mies.

For more in­spi­ra­tion for wed­ding re­cep­tion dish­es, vis­it the Trinidad­Wed­dings' Pin­ter­est Baord here: https://www.pin­ter­est.com/trinidad­wed­ding/fan­tas­tic-food-bev­er­age-ideas/