Catering for approx 120?

We did this in February 2007 with 120 people in our local village hall....ours was fantastic, didn't cost us a fortune and gave everyone a chance to pitch in and help..

We got married at 3pm, had cream teas, mulled wine and wine at around 4.30pm - this was easy to set up in advance, you could make and freeze scones in advance but I found a local lady who made them for 20p each, bought a big vat of jam from Makro and clotted cream from Costco. I had a vision of a 1940's tea dance but then forgot to put the music on - nobody noticed though and I took the still wrapped CD's back for a refund!

We then had a hot food buffet at 7.30 with chilli, veg chilli and fish and chips. Hubby made the chilli's in advance (you'll need more than the quantities you've noted above, work to 100g of meat per person) and our local chippy delivered fish and chips - we got them to cut the fish into two bit so that they were a more manageable size. Our chippy was glad of the business in a quiet time of year, we got a good deal that meant we weren't trying to cater all of it.

BUT I was pretty determined that my friends and family were not going to spend the whole of my wedding cooped up in the kitchen, cooking, clearing and washing up so I hired in a lady my aunt knew who put together a team of girls to come in and help. They cooked the rice, re-heated the chilli, set out the teas, coffees, mulled wine etc (my friends made the mulled wine in the morning and it was just re-heated in the afternoon). I've done outside catering and it's hard work and involves someone really being in control and organising. I think we paid them £5 or £6 an hour and I think it was about £100 all in - it was well worth it in my book.

We all went to the hall in the morning to set up the tables and deliver vast quantities of wine, juice, sparkling wine, bottled water etc., don't under estimate how long this will take - I doubt you can achieve this in time to be ready for a 12.30 ceremony, especially if your ceremony is in the same location. I'd go for a later ceremony if you can, this might avoid your two buffet scenario as well...We then left the "staff" to sort out cutlery, glasses, cups and to set out the cream teas.

Even with "staff" it still meant quite a lot of organising on our part throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening to make sure things happened as we wanted them, you'll need to be fairly relaxed about how things go unless you are going to spend the whole of your day being absolutely in control of everything which IMO will spoil your day.

Cold buffet - these are harder work than hot food, sandwiches are especially labour intensive and take up a lot of space in the fridge. I'd go for something more rustic than sandwiches and just put out sliced meat and loaves of bread so that people can DIY.

Don't assume that when people say they'd like to help that they actually mean it and that they will turn up and do what they say they will do! People say it because mainly everyone says "no thank you"!! They don't entirely expect you to say "yes please" and put you on the list. I'm a bit of a control freak and we (with close friends and close family) sorted everything ourselves because that way we KNEW it would get done...my cousin was supposed to contribute salsa for the chilli and it was a nightmare, hours of calls for a very small ball of salsa that was lovely but didn't go around!

I liked the idea above of re-homing a big chest freezer, we struggled for fridge and freezer space, not helped by it being unseasonably warm so that my plan of leaving the wine outside overnight to chill it didn't work as it was 8 degrees!

I'd recommend using Costco if you have one as they will take back anything that is unused, I took back a box of plastic cutlery, some banqueting roll, tea-lights, foil trays and some other stuff that we didn't use BUT you have to make sure people don't open all the boxes....we are still working our way through vast amounts of plastic cutlery as someone opened a new box that wasn't then needed!

Are you paying corkage at your hall? Oh and don't forget the wedding cake "cheat", the pretty cake people see, doesn't have to be the one you serve them...you can have a small'ish pretty cake and keep a slab of just iced cake in the kitchen to serve up, firstly this gets cake out quickly without waiting for someone to chop it up as you can do it in advance and secondly avoids having to produce large amounts of pretty cake!

Sorry for the hugely long post! Drop me a PM if you want to.

piglet brilliant advice
i did catering for my wedding in 1998 and it can be hard work.i found the hardest thing was fridge space to keep things cold but your hall sounds well equiped.i think u should find someone to oversee things..put the coffee maker on etc.....an aunr did it for us but perhaps u could pay someone
m and s do nice wedding cakes quite small looking but reasonable price (in wedding cake talk)

If you wanted guaranteed quality control(always risky with bring a dish )M&S and Sainsbury do platters you can pre-order you could get everyone to bring one of those

Hog roast ,you can hire the rotisserie machines and do it yourself and much easier to manage as its just sandwiches really

most butchers will sell you a whole cooked ham/turkey etc why not do cold meat with hot new potatoes and a few differrrent salads which can be prepared in advance when i was a caterer this was my most popular for large functions

loved the mulled wine idea

Have a great day

Shaz

I havn't read the rest of the thread so forgive me if I am repeating others here..

The idea of the hot buffet sounds fab!

I would suggest that in the evening you get a cuple of big George Formans (try freecycle of littlewoods/addisitions direct have a huge one with about £50 off at the moment plus there are loads of codes flying around) ,rope in the best man/ushers/friends and get them cooking bacon barms!

We went to a very posh wedding a month ago at the best hotel in town and this is what they served,so much better than a big huge buffet that gets wasted!