When do we reach out to our caterer?

We did our tastings first, so that we could be sure the food was up to our standards and that we actually wanted to hire them. We chose our menu selections at the tasting.

View Quoted Comment We've already hired them. I don't think they do tastings beforehand. But I want to know how many months out we should contact them again.

If you've already hired them and put a deposit down for a date, then there's no rush. However, of you're FH is excited about something, then I would ride that wave LOL. There's no harm in reaching out to schedule a tasting. They could tell you it's too early, but then you could schedule it for when the caterer feels is the best time. We did our tasting 7 months out. The pricing depended on the menu so choosing the food enabled is to budget the wedding better.

View Quoted Comment Oh wow. I actually don’t know anyone who has hired their caterers without doing a tasting first, so I’m not sure what the protocol would be here. If I were in your shoes, I would reach out to them and ask when they typically like to schedule tastings/menu selections with their couples.

Our caterer is part of our venue. We didn’t taste their menu before booking since it’s a package deal. We had our tasting last week for our October 7th wedding. I think most independent caterers allow you to taste before booking. I would reach out to them to make sure you are on track and if for some reason their menu isn’t what you’d expect, what can be done.

We were in the same boat as you (our caterer was also our venue) and we had written in our contract when we needed to do our tasting / make selections by. Is that included as an attachment to anything they’ve provided you?

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I checked again and our contract with them has no fine print like that. It's just a sample menu, a list of expected costs, and our signatures. So I guess my fiancé can call them if he wants. Like someone else said, it's nice that he's at least interested in some aspect of the wedding

View Quoted Comment This is how all inclusive venues work. They don’t allow tastings before you book the venue. That is a deal breaker for a lot of couples because you’re stuck with whatever they give you.


Do whatever works for you. Contact them to see when you can go in.

View Quoted Comment It's not an all-inclusive venue, the venue is doing the bar service and an outside caterer is doing the food. They just do tastings at weddings instead of in their office so we would need to set that up. But someone else here said they did it 7 months out, so that makes me feel a bit better since we're not too far from that 🙂

We did our tastings 15 months prior to our day. We got engaged July ‘19 & found our venue (which is all inclusive) in September ‘19 for our 4/3/21 wedding. We live in northern AZ & our venue is 3 hours away. With my husband being a firefighter our schedule is limited. He also does wild land assignments during the summer so nothing gets planned during that time as well. The few months before the wedding is already full of things to do so I wanted to mark that off the list.

View Quoted Comment If an outside caterer is doing the food, then get a tasting before you book them. Generally they are booked immediately after the venue to give a time frame and the tasting is done before you decide who to hire. Then you finalize the menu at the 6 month mark. If you have already booked them, then get a tasting ASAP. In case it doesn’t work out and you need to make other arrangements.

Our wedding is about a year away and our all inclusive venue is requesting us come up with our preliminary menu soon and then we'll do a tasting, and we can make changes as necessary (if there is something that we didn't like). Our venue actually has a restaurant too, so we went and had dinner with my FH's family there and everything was incredible so we're expecting the food at the wedding to be good too