How To Self Cater Your Wedding, Part I

self-catered wedding DIY

So. As promised, we are going to begin our foray into discussing self catering your wedding. I’ve gotten approximately a billion posts from y’all on the subject, and over the next few weeks I will be treating you to a few at a time. Before we dive in though, I wanted to outline my basic rules on self catering. Seriously kids, these ones are important:

  1. Is this cooking for large groups thing something you enjoy? Do you throw dinner parties? Do you, um, know how to cook? If the answer to these questions is not yes, PLEASE STEP AWAY. There is nothing wrong with a cake and punch reception. So pick up the phone, order some cake (and maybe an ice cream cake or two? Yum!) and buy yourself some punch and bubbly. Done. Your wedding is not the time to A) Take on a massive project that makes you feel like gouging your eyes out, or B) Learn to cook.
  2. Do you have help? Seriously. I’m going to ask again: Do you have help? Because you’re not going to be self-catering your wedding yourself, nuh-uh. Please see cake and punch, above.
  3. Food Safety. I’m a hippy kid. I’ve been to many a self-catered and community catered wedding/ party. When you hear people on the interwebs talk about it they are always like, “Blah, blah, blah, sharing food is sharing love, sharing love is sharing a community.” And whatever. That’s nice. But if sharing food means sharing a dubious fish and mayonnaise dish that was carted in a hot car for six hours… well… I’m pretty sure the communal act of vomiting was not what you were going for, yeah? So. If you’re going to self-cater, self-cater. But self-cater with safety. And that’s my final word on the subject.

But wait, that’s not even CLOSE to all. All APW posts on self catering are here. Hooray!


Picture: Best-picture-ever from Team Practical member Jill’s self catered wedding. taken by valkyrieh116

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