Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I think the only way to overcome the typical slew of challenges is to have a lot of money, or very few friends and family. It's just too damn expensive.

There are so many reasons for the actual hosts of the wedding being unable to provide good food, due to constraints imposed by venues and caterers, not to mention price. What is more frustrating is how many of these caterers don't provide the level of quality you might expect for the price.

The cheapest, boring chicken cordon bleu a la Sysco with rice and steamed veg can run nearly $30/head in the most average of reception halls, not including tax and the mandatory 18% gratuity or any drinks.

As with most wedding vendors, the caterers don't have to worry much about repeat business, so I suppose the perceived need to provide tasty food is negligible. But what makes it even more susceptible to a rip-off in price and quality is that most venues have an exclusive agreement with a catering company, so there's not even competition.

If you're extraordinarily lucky and are having a wedding in an area that hasn't seen a lot of lawsuits, you might be able to bring in your own food, though there may be a requirement that the outside caterer be licensed and insured.

I was lucky enough to find a place with no restrictions whatsoever, and I had aunts generous enough to cook for my wedding.

I would love to see a breakdown of the costs for catering a wedding. I know there's more than the cost of the actual food, but I can't imagine how it adds up so high.

We had raves upon raves about the food at our wedding this past September. Yes, we had to keep it small, but not so small that it was that much of a hardship.

We found a venue that was all inclusive price wise with minimal extra fees. In Manhattan, a lot of the private clubs do catering on the side, and have built in good kitchens to cater to their fancy members. That's the way we went and it was not only a great value but the food was excellent.

We loved is so much, a co-worker recently got married their on our recommendation. She was a first time younger bride (me, not so much) and had similar feelings about the place.

You just have to do the real hard grunt work of vetting and vetting until you find that needle in a haystack is sometimes what it comes down to.

my husband worked for the caterer, so we got a small discount; however, even if we didnt have the discount, we would have done okay on food costs, and the food itself was fantastic. this is one of those events where quality shouldw outshine quantity. you dont need 36 passed hors d'oeuvres, nor several pasta stations, carving stations, fondue stations, whatever other stations, etc... keep it simple and good quality. i found out ahead of time if there were special needs people (kids plates, vegetarian options), and served three butler passed hors d'oeuvres, a plated salad with goat cheese, and the rest was buffet style (one meat, one fish, a couple of veggies). dessert was the cake. nobody ever remembers the food at weddings, but people still remember ours and rave about it.

i only wish i hadn't spent so much money on flowers, because i dont even remember them.

our wedding was so teeny, we managed to do it all: fresh fish from the market, costco appetizers and booze, and Jack's Stacks BBQ delivered on dry ice. It rocked.

I agree with LauraMac - people would priortize whatever is important to them in their wedding planning. Obviously, this group, the Serious Eaters, would have the food on the top of their priority list.

Having great food was very important for my husband and me. We got married in Hawaii and only had our immediate family there. We spoiled them and ourselves with five course meal. Everything was fantastic.

Once we returned, we threw a weekend-long celebration party for our closest friends and family. We also had some BBQ delivered from South Carolina for one of the nights. Some of our friends from overseas hadn't had the real BBQ until then so they really enjoyed it.

For our main event, we focused on local ingredients and simply prepared dishes. We discussed what we want wiith our caterer and her chef prior to the tasting and tweaked a few things based on the tasting. I think everything turned out great and exceeded our expectations because we were able to stay on the same page with our caterer.

I can tell you that we didn't have any flowers except for my bouquet. We had fruits on the tables as a center piece instead. They looked beautiful and were eaten later on.

I was lucky as well. I planned my entire wedding, was laid off from work at the time so I had plenty of time to do everything myself. My family helped with the food, which included our traditional July 3rd chicken bbq....along with everyone's favorite 5 dishes from the annual cookout. My mother, father & aunt were generous enough to cook their 'signature' dishes. The biggest costs to us were the cake, the venue & the booze. It was a wedding to remember...even down to the flowers!
I think paying attention to detail, and perhaps some elbow grease on the wedding couples part if they are able to do it, does make a big difference.
As far as hiring a caterer....wouldn't do it unless I was incapacitated.

My daughter-in-law's family and I cooked for 200 and served it buffet style at their farm. Thank goodness for friends with freezers; I made 5 chocolate cakes (to supplement the small formal wedding cake), a dozen loaves of various breads, vats of hummus and about 6 pounds of lentil salad. People thought we'd had it catered.

And a friend of mine at a smallish second wedding in a country church decided to do what I'd always threatened to do if I married again, have a potluck reception. When people asked about gifts, she just said "bring a dish". I'd won a country ham a couple of months earlier--if eternity is, as some wit said, two people and a ham, what's a single woman and a ham? So I scrubbed down my bathtub with bleach, set the ham a-soaking in the tub and rented a pot large enough to cook it in.

Chinese wedding banquet is the way to go!

just don't settle! a good caterer, no matter how simple or inexpensive the food is, will be able to impress. if the venu restricts you to use their cater, try their food and if not acceptable, look further. everything about your wedding should be memorable, even the food.