Best Cheap Wedding Food
Delicious Finger Food, Budget Buffets, Entrees and Desserts
How to Save on Wedding Food

I have some delicious ideas for cheap wedding food and menu suggestions to fit your budget. You'll find suggestions for the food at the wedding reception. You'll also need a food menu for the wedding rehearsal dinner, unless you've made reservations at a restaurant. Then there's food for the bridal shower, food for the bachelorette party, and food for the wedding morning brunch.

Whenever you can serve a wedding meal at home, rather than at a restaurant, you'll save money. A buffet at the wedding reception is almost always a better bargain than a sit-down dinner. With a buffet you'll save on the cost of servers, and be able to offer more variety. A buffet allows your guests to mix and mingle as they serve themselves. Another secret of a cheap wedding menu is to choose foods that can be made a day ahead, and warmed up before serving or reheated briefly in the oven. To the extent that your cooking skills allow, make whatever you can in your own kitchen. Then supplement your wedding food with ready-made foods from the deli and bakery.

You don't have to make all the wedding foods yourself. Foods that are "almost homemade" taste just as good as homemade and save the cook time in the kitchen. Add to the wedding menu a few items from the deli and the bakery, and take on only as much cooking as you and your helpers are comfortable with. Don't plan on cooking food during the wedding party. Your guests would much rather enjoy your company then see you frantically stirring four pots at the stove. Perhaps you haven't done much entertaining up til now and are worried about how well you can carry off the big wedding food fest. Why don't schedule a complete run-through of the food preparation a few weeks ahead of time? After your practice, you'll be more comfortable with your menu for the wedding food.

As you plan the wedding food, be thoughtful about the dietary needs of your guests. Include a vegetarian dish for the vegetarian, a non-dairy food for the lactose intolerant, and less spicy foods for those who can't handle the heat. If it is possible, have a low calorie dish for all the dieters in the room.

Cheap Wedding Food Is OK
As Long As It's Delicious

No matter what the bridal professionals would have you believe, your wedding menu doesn't have to offer a choice filet mignon and roast capon. It's absolutely all right to serve cheap, but delicious, wedding food. For a casual wedding, if Mexican is your style, Chile Relleno and a pitcher of margaritas will be welcome. Indoors or outside in the garden, a chili party or a Texas barbecue party will let everyone relax and get acquainted. To capture the spirit of an Italian or Tuscan wedding theme with your wedding food, offer a giant platter of colorful antipasto to start off the meal. It could include roasted artichokes and red peppers, cheese balls, and provolone cheese, salami, and prosciutto ham.

Traditional Wedding Foods

An Italian traditional wedding food is Italian wedding soup. It's made with tiny meatballs and endive, or spinach, floating in a chicken broth thickened with eggs and cheese. This soup tastes even better the second day, so you can make it ahead of time.

Another traditional favorite wedding food is Mexican wedding cookies, also called Russian tea cakes. You might know them simply as nut balls. They are a popular small cookie made with ground nuts and lots of butter, shaped into balls, baked and then rolled in powdered sugar.

Why not include in your wedding menu a food that was served at your parents' wedding reception? It's a sentimental thought that may start a new family wedding tradition.

Cheap Wedding Foods for Dessert

Without a doubt, the most economical dessert for the cheap wedding menu is a homemade sheet cake with a buttercream icing. But you have many other delicious choices for dessert. Naturally, chocolate brownies are always popular. Do you think your guest would enjoy bourbon balls or chocolate truffles? You can made them in your kitchen or pick them up at a candy shop. If time is as scarce as money, you might buy from a bakery the dainty iced cakes called petits fours. At dessert time, a fresh fruit salad served over a scoop of sherbet in stemmed crystal glasses will be a big hit.

If you are up for a little cooking, consider cheesecake. It is surprisingly simple to make and keeps well in the refrigerator. When you serve the cheesecake, have a bowl of fresh strawberries or your favorite fruit to go with it. Another very inexpensive dessert that goes a long way is homemade rice pudding, made special with raisins, orange zest and a meringue topping.

For a cheap fun dessert, use homemade sugar cookies with a message. Roll out the cookie dough and use cookie cutters shaped like letters of the alphabet. When the cookies are arranged on the dessert table, they could spell out "LOVE" or the name of the bride and the groom. You could also use colored icing or sprinkles on the alphabet cookies to match the colors of the wedding. Sugar cookies hold up well so they can be made in advance of the party.

When I entertain, it's fun to surprise my guest with an original dessert, something delicious and new to them. There's lots of excitement when I bring Babas au Rhum to the table. Babas are individual cakes made from a yeast dough, no rising time required, and soaked in a simple sugar syrup with lots of rum. They are delicious topped with a dollop of whipped cream. These are French treats, fit for a princess, with a long history that dates back to the Court of Versailles in 1720. Canned babas au rhum are also available in the grocery store. But they are easy to make, so if you can make cupcakes, you can make babas.

Cheap Wedding Food, Finger Food and Buffets

For wedding food at a brunch or luncheon, serve dainty finger sandwiches. Cut off the crusts, if you want, and arrange the sandwiches on a cake server. For sandwich fillings, you could use watercress, cucumber and a butter spread. Finger sandwiches can also be made with various cream cheese spreads, smoked salmon or chicken salad.

Serve miniature balls of goat cheese rolled in chopped nuts, or rolled in chopped parsley. Pigs in a blanket have been done to death, because they are inexpensive and tasty finger food. But they are always welcome at a buffet. It's been a while since I've seen dates used as finger food. They are delicious stuffed with a small almond, wrapped in a half-strip of bacon, secured with a toothpick and baked in the oven.

Tomato-cheese bruschetta is an inexpensive and trendy finger food for the wedding party. Panini sandwiches are very popular with guests. They are not expensive, but they cannot be made ahead of time. Fill two slices of good bread with deli ham, mozzarella cheese and brown mustard, and toast them in your panini press. Cut the sandwiches into four small pieces and keep them warm on an oven-safe platter. Homemade soup can be made ahead of time for the wedding. If you also want to offer a smooth soup at the buffet, why not serve it from a heat-resistant punch bowl in convenient punch cups?

Make your buffet go further by adding snacks like cheese popcorn, spicy roasted nuts, and anything chocolate. Jordan almonds, with their crisp colored candy shells, are traditional wedding treats. Your guests will appreciate a tray of gourmet cheeses with crackers, olives and fruit. Cheese straws can be purchased at a bakery. For your tossed salad, open a package of salad greens from the grocery and serve with a selection of dressings. Chips and dip will also help stretch your party budget. Put snack trays around the room, so guests can mingle and nibble.

Delicious Cheap Wedding Food Entrees

In these busy times, when the host or hostess is also the chef, the butler, and the scullery maid, your guests do not expect to be waited on hand and foot. All but the most formal wedding food can be served buffet style. In fact, a buffet encourages conviviality, as guests select their favorite foods and eat at a leisurely pace. Some of your guests will have decided food preferences, allergies, or dietary restrictions. At a buffet, they can avoid problem foods without calling attention to themselves.

If cooking is not your forte, you can order carryout from your favorite restaurant, and serve it in your own dishes. For example, pick up several entrees from a cheap Chinese restaurant. It's been done before!!

For the main entree on your dinner table or buffet, baked ham, sliced roast beef, or fried chicken can all be made the day before the event and reheated briefly or served at room temperature.

At parties I often serve crepes rolled around a filling of creamed chicken. Crepes are thin pancakes. Both the crepes and the creamed chicken can be made a day ahead of time, then reheated and plated just before serving. If you can make pancakes, you can make crepes.

Casseroles are always welcome as wedding food, old favorites like lasagna, or scalloped potatoes, or baked macaroni and cheese with a breadcrumb crust, anything that can be made in advance and reheated just before serving. These casseroles are inexpensive and stretch to feed a large crowd.

One suggestion for a buffet wedding brunch is Huevos Rancheros, a casserole of eggs cooked in salsa and served with refried beans and tortillas.

As a delicious cheap idea for wedding brunch food, I suggest this fluffy egg casserole, which is assembled the night before you serve it. Line a casserole dish with buttered bread. Cover with a layer of cooked vegetables including mushrooms, onions and red peppers. Then add a layer of shredded cheese. Repeat the three layers again, bread, vegetables and cheese. Finally, pour an egg-and-milk mixture over everything and refrigerate overnight. The next day, cover and bake this egg casserole for 75 minutes. Absolutely delicious!

Wedding Food and Menus of Times Gone By

Just for fun, I checked out an old edition of the famous cookbook, Joy of Cooking, for ideas on traditional wedding foods. Joy of Cooking suggested entrees that would have been served at weddings in times past. One menu called for a Galantine of Turkey, with Lobster Newburg in Patty Shells, and Hot Consomme with Marrow Balls. I immensely enjoyed the recipe for a Galantine of Turkey. It is made with ground turkey, pork and veal, eggs, sherry and sauces, assembled on the intact skin from a whole turkey, layered with raw bacon, olives and truffles, pistachio nuts, etc., rolled up with the turkey skin, tied, poached, chilled and covered in aspic. As for those Marrow Balls, Joy is referring to bone marrow scraped from roasted animal bones, rather than the vegetable, marrow squash. These elaborate wedding foods from earlier times will make challenging demands on the do-it-yourself bride and her budget.

Bon appetit! I wish you oodles of happiness on your wedding day, and a lifetime of romance and lovely memories.
- Heather, Best Cheap Weddings

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Best cheap wedding food




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