Friday Faves-Tips for a Beautiful Wedding on a Budget-Part Five

It's been almost a year since our youngest daughter got married!

I guess it's about time that I posted the final installment of this Friday Favs series,

"Tips for a Beautiful Wedding on a Budget".

You can see the the older posts on this topic, 

now updated with the beautiful wedding photos from Sweetmint Photography.

See the first post, which is about setting a wedding budget, here.

See the second post, which is about choosing a wedding venue, here.

See the third post, which is about wedding decor and flowers, here.

See the fourth post, which is about selecting the wedding attire, here.

And today, in the fifth and final post of this series,

 we are going to talk about the food for the reception!

Our youngest daughter knew right away that she wanted an afternoon wedding with dinner following.

She also knew that she wanted some good Kansas City style barbecue for the wedding dinner, 

an ode to the years she lived in K.C.

Believe it or not, we served a lovely and delicious meal to 170 guests,

all within our wedding budget.  Here's how we did it.

Set a menu-

Our daughter's wedding venue was a lakeside lodge.

The ceremony was held outside by the lake,

and the reception dinner was held indoors with seating at tables for the guests.

Large doors to the deck overlooking the lake were kept open for the view, 

and some guests chose to eat outside.

Our daughter's menu choices were perfect for this more informal setting.

Entree and sides:

BBQ shredded pork sliders on pretzel buns

Baked Beans

Potato Salad

Coleslaw

Desserts:

Wedding cake

Assorted Homemade Pies

Drinks:

Iced Tea

Lemonade

Hot Coffee

Water

Ask for help-

There's is no way we could have given our daughter the wedding of her dreams within our budget 

without the help of a lot of friends and family.

Here's what we had help with-

My nephew smoked 70 lbs of pork for us!

(We purchased 70 lbs of pork roasts from Costco.)

After the pork was smoked and shredded my nephew 

added the K.C. Joe's BBQ sauce that we had shipped in.

We bought pretzel buns at Costco, 

and had another friend/volunteer be in charge of slicing them open in the kitchen of the wedding venue.

The groom's family recipe for baked beans was his request and his parents volunteered to make them.

They were so good!

We bought pre shredded packages of shredded cabbage and I made coleslaw dressing ahead of time.

Another friend/volunteer helped to mix up the cabbage and dressing in the kitchen at the venue.

The potato salad was made by a friend of the groom who has a restaurant.

 The meal was served buffet style, with friends/volunteers each in charge of dishing up one of the menu items.

Another friend/volunteer was kept busy filling up the containers of iced tea and lemonade.

The iced tea concentrate was made by me ahead of time, and she just had to add the concentrate

and water to fill the 2 gallon container.

She made the lemonade onsite, using the recipe on the container of lemon juice concentrate, 

and adding slices of fresh lemon.

Ice was available for the guests to add to their drinks.

Bottles of water were kept cold in a large container filled with ice.

My daughter is an assistant manager at Starbucks, so they provided the large containers of coffee.

The simply delicious wedding cake was made by a longtime friend from church.

There were sheet cakes of the (oh, so good!) spice cake in the kitchen, 

which were cut into slices in the kitchen to serve to the guests.

We bought the ingredients for the pies, and a good friend of my daughter's who works in a bakery flew across the country a couple of days before the wedding and made all of the pies!

Each pie had a cute label indicating what kind it was.

They were all so good and were eagerly gobbled up by the guests!

Another friend/volunteer helped to serve up the dessert.

Tips for setting your wedding reception menu on a budget-

Be realistic with your guest list.

For our daughter's wedding, the venue size limited her guest list for her.

The more people you have, the more people you have to feed, obviously.

Be realistic about what you want to serve.

If cake and coffee and punch is all you can afford to serve,

that's fine!

Don't feel forced to have more and do more than you can afford.

Also, you may want to note that serving alcohol is expensive.

For those who choose to serve alcohol at your wedding reception,

remember that you need to not only budget in the cost of the alcohol, but the cost of the permit to serve it.

Ask for help.

If you are wanting to serve more than cake, 

having a reception professionally catered may be within your price range, 

but if not, think about your circle of friends and family.

What are their special dishes?

We knew my nephew makes some fabulous things on his Traeger barbecue, 

so we asked for his help with the bbq pork and he said yes!

We bought the pork, but he did the hard part.

Remember the additional expenses:

Table linens, plates, cups, napkins, utensils...it all adds up!

We chose to rent table linens, which is not cheap.

However, the floor length linens looked lovely, 

and the fact that we didn't have to launder or iron them ourselves made renting so worth it!

We chose not to rent glasses, dishes, etc. , but for a more formal dinner reception, 

you may want to choose to do so.

Instead I shopped for nice looking, but sturdy, disposable plates, napkins and utensils, 

which were fine for our less formal setting and meal.

I hope you enjoyed this series, Tips for a Beautiful Wedding on a Budget,

 and that it will be helpful to any future brides, and parents of the bride, that you may know!

Well, it's almost Friday, friends.

I hope you have

a HAPPY, HAPPY Friday

and 

a safe and BLESSED weekend!

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