Customer Reviews

Cater Your Own Wedding, Revised

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is an answered prayer! Everyone (including myself) thought I must be insane to think I could provide my own catering.

This book contains all the details you need to coordinate the menus, food preparation, supplies, and decorating yourself. Everything is spelled out in simple, clear steps so that even a complete novice (like me) can do it! I especially like the variety of reception styles and food choices - I plan to mix and match a few of the menu items. I'm so glad I found the book - now I can quit stressing about this aspect of my wedding and move on to something else!

Good luck everyone!!! Tina (Wedding Date: 03/10/01)

The title was misleading. I was truly looking for tips on how to successfully cater my daughter's wedding myself. This book's whole premise is to have 17 to 29 of your closest friends prepare an item and bring it. Just not my style. Although I really did like the outline of food on banquet tables, I found the book a little lacking regarding appropriate table centerpieces and other reception decorations.

What a wonderful book. The minute I got it I couldn't put it down. Not only was the book great but Chef Mike was so helpful. He kept in touch with me until the big day to see if I had questions and even remembered to ask after the event how everything went. Now, do you get that from other authors? You can tell he loves what he does and makes you feel so comfortable. The instructions were so easy to follow and the recipes were wonderful. Thanks to Chef Mike my wedding shower was a huge success.

Just when I thought my head was going to pop off... Cater Your Own Wedding arrived in the mail. It had all the lists that I had started and misplaced, including drawings of table lay outs for 50 to 100 people. It broke down the job of organizing a party into neat catagories, each with it's own check list, enabling you to delegate whatever you couldn't handle yourself. The book includes recipes and amounts, number of chairs and tables needed, and things you wouldn't think of until it was too late. And it covers for different styles of parties, from a backyard reception or a fancy sit-down. This book isn't just for weddings, I'll use it again and again for all our large gatherings.

I love this book! It's got great recipes, creative decorating ideas, and most important, a plan that anyone can use to put on a great wedding reception. I especially like the way it encourages you to include friends and family in the preparation and festivities. The wedding reception becomes a meaningful event that loved ones can become involved in instead of a standardized, ho-hum package offered by caterers to thousands of brides. An added plus: the menus and plans aren't just for wedding receptions. I can see using them for holiday parties, church functions, and any time I entertain large groups of people.

If you have been searching in vain for a wedding resource that is truly helpful and practical, you can stop looking! This book covers every aspect of planning a wedding reception that you can imagine. The authors have done the hardest part for you: planned menus, compiled lists of groceries and needed items for different sizes of receptions, designed table set-up and room arrangement plans, etc. Everything is done in a step-by-step manner, so that even if you've never attempted anything of this sort before, you are soon brimming with confidence that you CAN accomplish this challenge. This book is by far the most useful of the many that I have examined and I recommend it without reservation to anyone who wants to have a wonderful reception without the ensuing debt that so often follows. If in doubt, buy it! I can guarantee you won't be disappointed.

I was very enthusiastic when I first ordered the book, UNTIL I saw the recipes.. Yikes!! For example, the author insists on using canned vegetables. I have 15 people ready to help me out.. with nothing to cook. I would NOT use these recipes. Terrible.. Terrible.. Ideas! I would be ashamed of serving these items at my wedding!!!

This book has drawbacks. It assumes that you have a LOT of reliable people prepared to help you cook. It is not a cookbook, and does not provide gourmet recipes. And it also assumes that quite a few people will be able to "work" during the reception, as well as ahead of time.
But it sure is a great help for those who want to have a wedding without hiring a caterer. With plans for a basic reception, an elegant one, a dessert reception, brunch, and even a barbecue, it will have a plan that will approximate your ideas.
Each plan includes shopping lists, with "hardware" like tables as well as food; diagrams for tables, rooms, and trays; and step-by-step directions. There are details of everything down to how to arrange the guest book table and where to put the groom's cake.
It is easy to adjust the recipes to your own taste, but the ones suggested are up to the usual standard for catered meals. And -- given plenty of willing helpers -- they will work, too. You may choose to get your ideas from one of the more elegant photogrph-filled books on the shelves, but you can still use this book to translate those dreams into reality.
And if you are doing a strictly cake-and-punch wedding, this book will allow you to set everything up with confidence in record time. It's worth having.

I am taking care of a lot of my wedding details myself due to a tight budget, I read this book cover to cover the night I got it! I loved this book. I liked that it tells you the exact quantity of ingredients for the number of guests you have. If you are slightly handy in the kitchen (can you make a sandwich?) you can prepare the food in this book. Catering your own wedding is hard work, but if you have a tight budget and like cooking you will love this book!

I bought this book thinking it would give tips from a chef on how to pull off a wedding, but instead it's full of stuff like "assemble 20 of your friends to cook", and "sandwiches are acceptable wedding food". Come on! Who can't put together 150 sandwiches? Duh. I needed something to show me how my fiance and I could do our own elegant dinner with the least amount of aggravation. Save your money on this waste of time.