Evening buffet numbers

My venue has suggested we cater for 75% of our total number as most day guests will stay but older family members or people with young children may leave before the evening food. I think 50% might be a bit low IMO

BTW, £18 a head is quite a lot, what are you having?

I know ? it's not definite yet but we wanted an "indian takeaway" style buffet. Our package comes with a hog roast when makes me feel sick whenever I think about so we're swapping that for something else. The ordinary buffet is £15 so I figured for a few more quid we might as well have what we want

If we catered for 75% that would be 125ish. 25 of those are already accounted for in package so would need 100. Eek that's a lot of money! x

My venue says we have to cater for 75%, so this is what I am doing. You could maybe get away with 65% as a compromise? As hopefully evening guests will have eaten previously, and day guests will have had a meal.

Weve got to cater for 90% of the guests but am going for 80% as i cant see children eating any of the food and not all the guests will xx

I think 50% is definitely too low, 65% would probably be pushing it but you might just get away with it. How many hours between your sit down meal and evening buffet? If it's quite close, your day guests might not eat in the evening, but if there's a big gap, there's more chance of them wanting food in the evening too!

I've just emailed venue to check! Sit down meal is at 4.30 and evening guests will be arriving at 7.30 so I dunno, 8.30? Hopefully not enought time to get hungry again!

I would defintely cater for more than 50%. We are going to do 85%.

We're required to cater for 70% of the guests, which is what we plan to do. Our wedding breakfast is at 5:30, so those guests will likely not be very hungry until quite late, and we're doing a DIY sweets and treats bar and 9 cakes, all of which will be available in the evening, so I think 70% will be more than enough.

I would assume that your evening guests will want t ohave a bite, but if you think your day guests probably won't, you could stick to a lower number.. To be safe, though, I'd up the percentage a bit. Negotiate with the caterers a bit and see if you can supplement it and do 50% catered in the Indian takeaway style, but then an addition 25% catered to with sausage rolls and the like much cheaper!

We're catering for 75% of evening guests. and our evening buffet is only £8pp

Had an answer from venue and 100% of our day guests are provided for and buffet is at 9pm. That gives us a bit more flexibility with numbers so if we base it on catering for 75% it should be affordable phew! Thanks for your help

Our venue is making us cater for 100% of our evening guests which is VERY annoying - reckon we'll be ok sneaking a few extra?!

Thats's mean, and how would they ever know??

WSS!

There's no way they'll know exactly how many you have! And if they call you on it, say there might have been a couple you thought weren't coming

I know, I might just do that... not like they're gonna be stood there with a clicker and chucking people out... plus, it's extra money on the bar! We're paying £1200 venue hire, £55 a head for 70 for the wedding breakfast AND wanted to pay the £16 buffet cost for 130 out of 150 of our guests so thought they'd let us off 20 guests or so!

Like most of the others we're going for 80%. Our sit down meal is 3.30-4 with the evening hot/cold buffet going out about 8ish so I think a fair few of the day guests might not touch the buffet as the portions for the main meal are huge