Having A Schedule For Your Meal Service

Having a schedule for your meal service is by no means a must have, but providing your caterer with at least a timeline of your day is extremely helpful. We pride ourselves in being very flexible in professionally dealing with whatever schedule changes, guest count increases or decreases, last minute allergies, or more that there might be on the day of your event, but we’ll take as much information as we can ahead of time so we can ensure you have an event that runs flawlessly!

Events with smaller guest counts can get away with a loose dinner schedule with speeches thrown in here and there, but if you do have a larger guest count, or your venue has a strict lights out time, we want to make sure your meal service fits seamlessly into your timeline and is not rushed in any way. 

Of course everything is totally customizable, but here are some lengths of time we suggest for each segment of your meal should you choose to add them.

• Appetizer service 30 minutes to 1 hour. Most times appetizers get cleaned out in the first frenzied round of hungry wedding guests, but they quickly fill up and refills slow down at the 30-45 minute mark. You also don’t want to go too long with appetizers and have your guests too full for dinner.

• Beverage service is a very unique situation for each event, but it is obviously great to have beverages available for your entire reception.

• Dinner service, if plated, should be given about 20 minutes per course. If you are going with a typical 3 course meal, that would be an hour for dinner service. Buffet and family style should be given the same amount of time for guests to have the opportunity to refill their plates. Larger weddings (50+ guests) should be given 90 minutes to allow for traffic. Always add buffer time if there will be speeches and let your caterer know when you are hoping to have those speeches so staff aren’t setting or clearing dishes during that time.
• Cake cutting is a great opportunity for pictures and doesn’t require any real schedule. We highly suggest if you are serving cake to your guests afterwards that the serving staff put it out buffet style on individual plates with forks for guests to help themselves throughout the rest of the evening, especially if you are doing a separate dessert service.