Your special day is uniquely yours. From the venue to the dress to your cocktail of choice, your wedding theme is a representation of who you are as a couple. The menu should be no different. Every appetizer, course, dessert, and cocktail is an irreplaceable part of what makes your wedding feel (and taste) like your wedding. It’s no wonder that deciding what to serve can feel like a daunting task!
Rather than getting bogged down in whether to serve beef or chicken, start by choosing a catering style. The catering style should reflect your wedding theme, including your choice of venue and personal taste, while also being appropriate for your guest list and on-site facilities.
Once you decide on a catering style, Bradshaw Catering can help you design a custom menu that will make your wedding menu one to remember.
The 4 Most Popular Catering Styles
There isn’t just one way to feed your guests or serve an unforgettable menu. Yet, most event catering falls into one of four categories: plated service, buffet style, interactive food stations, or family style. There are advantages and limitations to each, so it really depends on your theme, venue, and personal preference.
1. Plated service
Plated wedding service is the most elegant and formal catering option available. Your guests remain seated while professional waitstaff bring each dish directly to their table. The menu is served in pre-plated courses, beginning with appetizers and followed by a main course and dessert. This dining experience is refined, organized, and classic.
At Bradshaw Catering, we specialize in seamless plated services for both intimate and large-scale celebrations. Our team handles everything from plating to presentation to service with the high-end professionalism that you want on your wedding day. We take care of all the logistics, so you can focus on savouring every bite and enjoying your special day.
Plated Service Catering Is Best For:
Plated service catering is ideal for weddings with a sophisticated, formal atmosphere. It suits luxurious locations, elegant themes, and extravagant tastes. Meals are served simultaneously, helping your wedding to stay on schedule and feel organized.
Additionally, plated service offers greater control over portions since every meal is pre-plated. Every guest gets the exact same dish. You know precisely how much food is needed, which is particularly important if you’re offering specialty meals and complex courses.
Limitations of Plated Services:
Since plated service requires a high level of organization, alongside multiple courses and often more complex meals, it tends to be more expensive than other catering options. More staff are needed, more time is required to prepare and plate each meal, and more ingredients are utilized, resulting in higher labour and material costs.
2. Buffet style
Buffets are flexible, dynamic, and relaxed. You can serve a wide variety of beautifully presented and tasty dishes, ensuring that there’s something for everyone. Guests are free to return for seconds—or even thirds! It’s a sociable, engaging, and guest-friendly way to dine.
Bradshaw Catering’s buffet catering packages go beyond the basics. Our chefs design a dining experience that is both cohesive and diverse. Your guests can explore a wide range of flavours, including everything from globally inspired cuisine to well-known favourites.
Buffet Style Catering Is Best For:
Semi-formal, outdoor, laid-back, and budget-conscious weddings are ideally suited to buffets. They provide a more communal, relaxed atmosphere, since guests inevitably end up gathering around the food stations. If you’re a couple that wants to encourage mingling, a buffet is best.
Additionally, buffets are a fantastic choice if you have a large group to feed. Since buffets are generally more affordable, you can accommodate a large guest list without blowing your budget. You can also serve a wide variety of dishes, so there’s something for everyone.
Limitations of Buffets:
Buffets aren’t suitable for every wedding theme, particularly formal themes. They also require more space, making them a tough fit in small venues. Additionally, you need to factor in other venue constraints, like power for warming or cooling trays.
3. Interactive food stations
Interactive food stations add entertainment and a personal touch to your reception. Think of pasta bars, taco stands, or Bradshaw Catering’s signature Fire & Dough mobile pizza parties. Live cooking in front of your guests turns dinner into part of the show, making for an evening that is just as memorable as it is delicious.
We offer a variety of food stations at Bradshaw Catering, ensuring that we have a station for every culinary theme. Gourmet carving station? Decadent dessert stand? Fresh pasta station? Bradshaw Catering does it all and with style.
Interactive Food Stations Are Best For:
Interactive food stations are great for fun, casual, and modern weddings that want to create a memorable, exciting atmosphere for guests. Wedding guests can engage with chefs, ask questions about the food, and mingle with others as they watch a show with their dinner. They are best for outdoor venues or large indoor spaces.
Limitations of Food Stations:
They require more space since food stations need to be spread apart. You can also end up with too much or too little food, though Bradshaw Catering’s planning team can help minimize the risk of food waste and ensure that your wedding doesn’t run out of meals.
4. Family-style catering
This approach involves serving large plates of food “family style” to the guests. Essentially, it looks like giant platters of delicious meals placed in the centre of tables. It combines the best part of plated service and buffets. Guests can choose from an abundance of food options and decide their own portions (like a buffet), but they don’t have to get up from the table (like a plated service).
The result is a warm, intimate, and yet slightly more formal dining experience. Your guests can enjoy a more communal atmosphere with a varied menu, without the wait times and bottlenecks that often accompany buffets or food stations.
Family Style Is Best For:
This style is suitable for any wedding that wants to strike a balance between a formal and informal dining experience. The menu options are more flexible, since there’s more room for variety and flexibility. Your guests have the choice to try different dishes, which makes for happy and well-fed guests!
Limitations of Family Style:
The downside of allowing guests to fill their plates to the heart’s (or stomach’s) content is that you sacrifice portion control. This can put you at risk of having too much or too little food. Family-style also requires more table space, as the large platters need to fit on the table and be passed around while everyone is serving themselves.
Additional Event Catering Services
- Hors d’oeuvres: Begin your celebration with hors d’oeuvres and grazing tables. These small bites are big on flavour and are visual masterpieces.
- Cocktail hour: Bradshaw Catering’s experienced bartenders create magnificent and tasty high-end beverages for your guests.
- Dessert tables: When it’s time for something sweet, our dessert tables will satisfy your cravings. Choose from a delectable range of New York cheesecake, chocolate truffle cake, mini-pastries, and other indulgent late-night snacks.
Whatever Your Wedding Theme, Bradshaw Catering Delivers
Bradshaw Catering has the expertise and creativity to accommodate any wedding theme, formal or informal, large or small! Our talented chefs and professional waitstaff bring the highest level of organization and menu customization to event catering of all shapes and sizes.
From elegant plated services to versatile buffets and entertaining interactive food stations, our catering services will make your wedding menu absolutely unforgettable.
To learn more about our wedding event catering services, call Bradshaw Catering at (289) 278-9475 or contact us here.
