From twelve months out to the last hour of load-out, here is what your caterer needs from you and when they need it.
Most of wedding catering is not cooking. It is a sequence of decisions that have to happen in a particular order, because each one depends on the last. Guest count sets the menu scale. The menu sets the equipment. The equipment sets the load-in time. Get the order wrong and you spend the last month re-doing work.
Here is the sequence, with honest ranges. If you are reading this six weeks out and panicking: skip to the bottom. Short timelines are workable more often than the internet suggests.
Twelve to nine months out: date, venue, caterer
The venue comes first, because it determines what catering is even possible. Before you sign anything, ask the venue three questions: is there an exclusive caterer or an approved list, is there a working kitchen, and what are the load-in and curfew times. Those three answers change your catering budget more than any menu decision you will ever make.
- Lock the date and the venue.
- Find out whether the venue restricts who can cater. An exclusive-caterer venue is a fine choice, but it should be a choice you made knowingly.
- Start caterer conversations. For a Saturday in high season — roughly November through April down here — good caterers are booked well ahead.
- Set a working budget for food and service. A range is enough at this stage.
Nine to six months out: sign, and shape the menu
- Sign the catering contract and pay the deposit. This is what actually holds your date — a verbal hold is not a booking.
- Agree the service style. Plated, buffet, family-style, or stations, because it drives staffing and rentals from here on.
- Draft the menu. Not final — a shape. Two or three entrée directions, the cocktail hour concept, and any cultural or family dishes that matter to you.
- Raise dietary requirements now, not later. Vegan, gluten, allergies, kosher-style. Designed in at this stage, they cost almost nothing; bolted on at the end, they cost a scramble.
- Confirm who owns the rental list — you, the planner, the venue, or the caterer. One owner, or you will pay twice.
Six to four months out: the tasting
The tasting is not a sales dinner, it is a working session. Come with opinions and leave with decisions. Bring the people whose opinion will actually change the menu and nobody else — a tasting with eight relatives becomes a committee, and committees pick the safest dish on the table.
- Taste the dishes you are seriously considering, seasoned the way they will be served.
- Ask how each dish holds. A dish that is perfect at the tasting table and tired after twenty minutes in a hot box is a different dish at your wedding.
- Decide the entrées and the cocktail hour. Sides and passed bites can move later.
- Talk through the day's timeline while everyone is in the room.
Three months out: the details that bite
- Finalise the menu in writing, including the vegetarian and allergen plates.
- Confirm rentals against the final floor plan, not the original one.
- Walk the venue with your caterer if you can. Where the kitchen sets up, where power comes from, where the truck parks, and where the trash goes are all real questions with real cost attached.
- Confirm vendor meals — photographers, band, planner. They eat, and they should be priced differently from guests.
- If you are getting married outdoors, agree the rain plan now and put it in writing. Not the concept of a rain plan. The actual one, with the actual call time.
One month out: numbers get real
- Send the guest count. Not final, but close.
- Provide the seating chart if you are doing plated service, with meal choices attached.
- Confirm the timeline hour by hour with the venue, the planner, the band, and the caterer all looking at the same document.
- Confirm load-in time and access. Guard gates, service elevators, and bridge schedules are exactly the kind of thing that becomes a crisis at 3pm on a Saturday.
Ten to seven days out: the final count
Most caterers need a guaranteed headcount somewhere in this window, and most contracts let the number go up more easily than down. That is not a trick — food is ordered and staff are scheduled against that number, and both are committed once it is given.
- Give the guaranteed count and the final balance.
- Send the final dietary list with names attached, so a plate can find a chair.
- Confirm the day-of contact. It should not be you, and it should not be a parent. Name a planner, a coordinator, or the most unflappable friend you have.
The day itself
A rough shape, though every venue changes it. Load-in usually starts four to six hours before guests arrive — longer if the venue has no kitchen and the whole operation is arriving on a truck. Passed bites begin the moment the ceremony ends, because that hour is when guests are most likely to be drinking on an empty stomach. Dinner service runs on the timeline you signed off a month ago. Breakdown takes an hour or two after the last guest leaves, and someone from your side should know where everything goes.
“Staff who read a room, arrive early, and clean up like they were never there. You should be hosting your event, not managing your caterer.”
If your timeline is shorter than this
Plenty of good weddings are planned in three months, and some in six weeks. What gets compressed is the shopping-around phase, not the cooking. A short timeline means fewer venue options, fewer available Saturdays, and a tasting that happens closer to the wedding — but the food is the same food.
What genuinely cannot be compressed: specialty rentals with long lead times, custom equipment for a raw-space venue, and anything that needs a permit. If your date is close, ask about those three first.
