What’s the #1 thing that wedding guests remember from your Big Day? How great you looked is actually #2 – the #1 most memorable element of a wedding day is how great the food was. Your guests have come to celebrate with you, and you are actually thanking them for their presence by creating a delectable menu for the reception. It’s your gift to them, as well as to yourselves.

 Catering costs a lot, so be prepared for some high numbers. The top-tier food choices on your wish list could add up to a grand total of hundreds of dollars per person. But with the help of this list, and with your caterer’s advice, you can build an impressive, delicious menu for your cocktail party, dinner, and dessert hours for a fraction of what other brides and grooms are spending. Here are the top tips:

•Create combination platters. Rather than give your guests the choice of chicken, beef of salmon – which means the chef would have to buy enough of all three choices in order to feed guests who change their minds from their original requests – offer them a combo plate. These are the new in thing…a gorgeous plate filled with grilled shrimp and tender beef medallions in a Madeira sauce, with an asparagus bundle and garlic mashed potatoes. It’s a lighter-budget surf and turf, and guests love getting the best of both worlds. And it costs you 40% less than the traditional way.

•Skip the extra courses, like soup and salad. Guests will have had enough at the cocktail hour.

•Choose one of the least expensive stations: a pasta bar, a mashed potato bar or a soup bar. Then make sure your other stations are higher-priced fare, so that you don’t look like you ‘cheaped out’ on your guests.

•Rather than have a seafood bar – which is one of the most expensive things out there – add some seafood touches to your other stations. For instance, you can offer a bowl of lobster meat or crab meat topping at the pasta bar, which costs a fraction of the whole lobster price.

•Have your pricier appetizers, like shrimp cocktail and bacon-wrapped scallops, hand-passed by servers, rather than set out on a buffet table. Caterers say that guests eat fewer when the tray comes around, not wanting to look too gluttonous to the waiter. If it was a shrimp platter on a buffet table, that means guests would eat far, far more.

•Mix up hot and cold appetizer choices. Guests love it when they get a bite of something cold and fresh to cleanse the palate a little in addition to the heavier, hotter appetizers.

•Check with your caterer to see what meats and seafoods are in season a few weeks before your wedding. The market price for lobster may be through the roof, while the prices for clams and oysters are really terrific.

•Do something different with lower-budget food choices. For instance, pasta and chicken are among the lower-priced items, so how can your caterer make these really exciting? How about a chicken and spinach rollatine, or a chicken in pineapple ginger sauce? Seafood tortellini? Going with something unique makes it look like you spent less.

•Forget the cheese platter. No one eats that, and it’s a waste of money. They get cheese platters at every office holiday party.

•If you’d like to incorporate a dish from your culture, look into having a heritage association’s cooks prepare the food for you. For instance, I found a great team of wonderful Ukrainian chefs to make pierogies – at 65% off the cost of catering prices. Look online to find your heritage association and see if they offer wonderfully-priced authentic food.

•Don’t limit the serving time for a cocktail hour reception just to save money. Guests hate being rushed through the food line, and then being left hungry. This is the biggest Don’t there is.

•A hot new trend on a budget: the bread bar. Counting carbs goes out the window for weddings, so find a really great baker or caterer who can create a bounty of breads – rye, pumpernickel, hot cross buns, Asiago cheese breads, grissinis – served warm with soft butter and other toppings. This is one of the top budget choices, since everyone loves a great, warm cut of bread that’s unique and original.

•For carving stations, go with the good stuff – prime rib, ham, pork, turkey. And have the chef cut thinner slices, with a range of sauces. No one needs an inch-thick slice of prime rib at the cocktail party, so you’ll save money with the presentation without ‘cheaping out’ on food choice.

•For your wedding cake, remember that it’s the labor that makes it expensive. So choose a simpler design style with just icing, and not those hundreds of little sugar paste flowers.

•Order a smaller wedding cake, perhaps three tiers, and cut that in front of your guests. Then, the staff will slice and serve that cake as well as a sheet cake in the same cake flavor and fillings.

•Invest in your cake, though. Don’t choose the bargain yellow cake with strawberry frosting if that didn’t knock your socks off at the tasting. You can go up in price tier for the chocolate cake with cannoli filling, since that will please your guests far more. Just use the smaller cake method to save some money.

•No need to have a full Viennese table covered with desserts. You’ll save a fortune by having just your cake, chocolate covered strawberries, and petit fours or pastries. When you bring in server stations like an ice cream bar, bananas foster, and other pricy options (which your guests have had at so many other weddings, it really doesn’t impress them), that elevates your budget. So stick with a few high-quality chocolate desserts, and one of the top budget choices is a bowl of fresh strawberries with whipped cream. Guests love having something healthier to end the night on, and that’s a romantic dessert as well.

•For your after-party, don’t cater a formal menu. If it will be at the hotel, bring in pizzas or bar food snacks. If it will be at your home, heat up some appetizer trays that you bought at a warehouse store like Costco or Sam’s Club. Trays of finger sandwiches are also good budget items for this smaller party, and this might be where you can set out those bowls of shrimp cocktail for a classy end touch.

•Some couples arrange to have their leftover wedding food brought up to their suite, or to their home, for everyone to enjoy at the after-party. That’s a detail to be arranged with the caterer or banquet hall manager, as some don’t allow takeout due to health code or legality issues.

Sharon Naylor is the author of 1000 Best Wedding Bargains, and
over 30 additional wedding books, www.sharonnaylor.net