Extortionate wedding catering! Reasonable recommendations London/South East?

[Wildswimming2022]

ABIU to think these prices are completely outrageous?

Could not help but be disgusted at the amounts wedding caterers are charging. Please do let me know if I'm completely missing something here.

A local pub come wedding caterer was charging £54 pp for a very average sounding two course meal, then has the audacity to charge an extra £5,000 for staff, crockery, table dressing, mobile kitchen etc.

Another was £45 pp for a meal that would cost £15 in a restaurant. They still expect you to pay an extra £1500 - £2000 for the essentials required to actually eat the meal (staff, crockery etc).

For £45 in a restaurant you would get a much more impressive meal and the staff plus rent & bills, and all the rest would absolutely be included.

For meals for approx. 100ppl you would expect to benefit from economies of scale. Unfortunately not!

Does anyone know of any smaller restaurants who can offer catering? Or just some more reasonable caterers in the London area? Was budgeting around £50 pp for the meal including canapes and crockery, and staff time etc. I'd previously thought this was a healthy budget!

Sorry OP but that is a totally normal amount to pay. I’m not saying it’s not a lot but if you want to do it cheaper you might need to look at a buffet, BBQ, or hog roast instead of a sit down meal

In a restaurant the chef isn't feeding 100 people at the same time. Plus you would be in a restaurant for circa 2 hours- for your wedding you might be at the venue from 2pm -12am which is a lot of hours to pay staff for. Weddings are a lot of hard work.

I've since received far more reasonable quotes, where the £40-50 per head includes staff, crockery, etc. In the £1500 - £5000 for 'extras' mentioned above most of the the staff would only be around for 4/5 hours. So I still can't see how these costs can be considered reasonable when in a restaurant they would have rent and bills to pay for. It strikes me as fine example of the state of the wedding economy in the UK and providers charging whatever they feel they can get away with.

I'm looking at the same sort of budget as you OP for my upcoming wedding and my first quote when I was asking availability came back at £110 per person for a 2 course meal (£60pp for the meal and £50pp for all the extras). I love my friends and family but not that much 😂 I'm glad you've had more reasonable quotes now - I slowly getting them too but the mini heart attack for any wedding quotes is still strong in my mind.