Your Future Spouse Budget/Plans Store Healthy Bride The Ceremony Ideas The Bride The Bridal Party Jewelry Flowers Venues Stationery The Reception Wedding Cakes Decorations Crafts Smile Pretty! Honeymoons Showers Gift Ideas Links Miscellaneous
"Yes, you can cater your own wedding reception, just like I did, and save thousands of dollars."
You will save a lot of money if you choose to cater your own wedding reception. Actually, enlist some close friends, family, and church members to help you with this. You will be too busy as the bride to actually do any wedding day catering.If you choose soft drinks instead of alcohol, there is a good selection of non-alcoholic wedding drinks to choose from. The simplest and most obvious choices (not to mention the most inexpensive) are water, coffee, and iced tea. You may want to include soda, lemonade, or sparkling non-alcoholic juice if you have room in the budget for it.
If you choose to have a picnic-style or a backyard barbecue reception, chilled cans and bottles of water, soda, and tea will work out great for drinks. If your reception is more formal, of course, drinks will need to be served in pretty glassware.
For toasts, use non-alcoholic sparkling juice. It comes in a variety of flavors such as apple, white grape, and red grape. Good news--it is kid-friendly so the kids at your wedding can feel special and drink the same thing as mom and dad!
You can also use club soda or Perrier sparkling water. Perrier now comes in plain, lemon, or lime flavors.
When you pour sparkling juice into champagne glasses, it looks just like champagne. You can only get about five glasses out of one bottle so it is not cost effective if you are serving a lot of guests and you have a small budget. It is around $3 a bottle at Wal-Mart or Sam's. So use it for the toasting portion of your reception and then serve less expensive soft drinks, iced tea, and coffee for the rest of the time.
When you cater your own wedding reception, make sure that someone is assigned to keep the drinks fresh and full from punches to coffee and tea. Plain lemonade or Kool-Aid should also be on hand for children.
Have A Great Idea For A Non-Alcoholic Beverage For Weddings?
Do you have a great idea for a non-alcoholic wedding beverage? Would you share your recipe with other brides? Thanks.