Providing Meals for Your Reception Vendors

The seating chart is turned in, along with your finals numbers for your reception. Not so fast - did you remember to include your reception vendors?

It's certainly not required, but I think that providing a meal for your vendors is a classy move and I'm sure hugely appreciated. Your vendors will be going for hours non-stop to provide service for your wedding, and getting a chance to sit down for a few minutes and enjoy a nice meal is definitely nice.

Think not only your DJ or band, caterer and wedding coordinator but also your photographer. Your photographer and videographer have most likely been at your side for the vast majority of the day, on their feet for hours and will probably be starving by the time dinner is served. As long as your vendors have everything covered for about 15 minutes (songs on the playlist, etc.), they should absolutely be given a meal in my opinion.

Sure, it's not a must, but a bonus will be that they will be happier in the end, and therefore do their jobs better!

If you're serving a buffet, just add your vendors into the head count. If you're doing a sit-down dinner, you could either serve them the same meals as your guests or a less elaborate version. And don't forget to have a place for them to eat, such as setting up a small table in the corner of your reception venue, so that they have a place to set any personal items (cameras for the photogs) and sit down to eat.

And be sure to talk it over with each of them and make sure that they actually want to be fed and don't have any dietary restrictions in regards to what you will be serving!