Wedding Reception Food Ideas to Help Stay Within a Budget

Your wedding reception has the potential to blow your budget with the refreshments or meal you want to serve. This also depends on how many guests you will have attending. You don't have to follow tradition or you can combine tradition with a new twist of your own. How can you have a memorable wedding reception and stay within a reasonable budget?

For Early Afternoon Weddings

Desserts - a dessert buffet works great for an early afternoon wedding reception. You can serve an assortment of desserts including pastries, cookies, candies, small cakes, truffles, along with coffee and punch. You may have friends or relatives who love to bake and could offer their delicious treats.

Outdoors - for a summer wedding an outdoor reception can work well. You could have a picnic in a park or even a BBQ in your own back yard. For a picnic you could include the traditional picnic foods such as salads, fried chicken, corn on the cob, green beans, rolls and also some inexpensive desserts and a couple varieties of drinks. For a BBQ, the options are plentiful from steaks to chicken and kabobs. This will of course depend on your budget.

Tea party - a tea party is perfect for an afternoon. It fits well within most budgets. You could include a variety of teas, coffee and maybe champagne for drinks. For food you could have small cakes, tarts, finger sandwiches and toasted panini.

For Evening Weddings

Buffet - a buffet can work well and there's a variety of food to suit most everyone's taste. You could include soup, rice, potatoes, a variety of pasta, a variety of bread, an assortment of vegetables or salad, along with sliced turkey, cabbage rolls or roasted chicken and some simple desserts. A buffet with this large of a variety may be more expensive, but still within a reasonable budget if you are having a lot of guests.

Keeping it simple - if you don't want to spend as much as you would for a buffet, you can keep it simple by offering a variety of sliced meats and a variety of cheese. Include an assortment of bread and crackers and also fruits such as strawberries, grapes, sliced apples with dip. You could add some side salads and of course drinks.