From wedding locations to corporate events, catering in the United States has taken off in recent years. And it makes sense – people love food. Food is what brings people together, at wedding locations or at birthday parties or even at a business meeting. Hiring a catering company can help to take some of the stress out of planning a big event, as some catering companies contribute far more than the food, even helping to design certain aspects of the event.
Weddings are by far one of the most popular reasons to hire a caterer, with nearly two and half million weddings occurring every year in the United States alone. Wedding locations may vary, and some wedding locations might provide an in house catering service. However, many wedding locations do not – and more and more are choosing to get married outside. In fact, the number of outdoor weddings has risen to make up nearly thirty five percent of all weddings in total, and if a ceremony is held completely outdoors (let’s say, in a backyard or at a local park) it is unlikely that it is one of the wedding locations with which catering services come along as part of the wedding package. In such a case as this, an outside caterer would need to be hired.
But wedding ballrooms are also hugely popular, and have remained so for a long period of time. A ballroom is a typical wedding reception venue, as it can be easily decorated to fit the theme of the wedding (if the wedding has a theme, that is) and can typically accommodate a large number of guests.
Guests are an important thing to consider when you’re looking into catering services at wedding locations or even apart from them. For instance, do your guests have a significant number of dietary restrictions? If so, it is probably a good idea to make sure that some of the items on your menu meet those restrictions while still being appealing to other guests. It is important as well to consider the number of guests you will have, as catering a wedding of fifty people is much different than catering a wedding of one hundred, and will affect your costs and how you must allocate your budget significantly. And bigger weddings are more popular than ever, as the typical couple will invite as many as one hundred and thirty six guests to their wedding.
The time of day that your wedding is held is also an important consideration to make when it comes to arranging your catering services and compiling your menus. For instance, more than thirty percent of weddings occur in the evening and more than fifty percent occur in the afternoon. At these weddings, it is likely that you will serve dinner after a brief cocktail hour. It is important to note, however, that cocktail hour spending is on the rise, with more and more couples putting an emphasis on their cocktail hour as an important part of the wedding. For the more than fifteen percent of weddings that take place in the morning, brunch is often the suggested meal, as it often negates the need for a cocktail hour and has a wide variety of options as well as cocktails.
Planning your wedding can be a stressful event, but at least picking a catering service (or looking at wedding locations that already have them on site) can make it a little easier. After all, food is a hugely important part of any wedding, and it is likely that some wedding guests will remember a particularly good meal for years to come.