Indian weddings are known for their warm hospitality. We want our wedding guests to feel welcome and comfortable throughout the wedding weekend. A component of that is serving breakfast to your guests.

Venues are happy to work with you to provide solutions that will work within your budget and also ensure their standards. Most venues allow outside catered food for breakfast, however they provide the beverages.

{Breakfast Best Practices}

Vouchers – this is the easiest way to arrange breakfast. Each voucher is worth a set amount. Pre-distribute vouchers in the welcome bags and guests can enjoy breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant. You don’t have to bring in a caterer, nor arrange a room setup, nor worry about the venue’s staff and your caterer refreshing the room. However, they won’t serve chai, nashto and other popular breakfast foods we all love. Instead you’ll get continental, pancakes, cereal etc….but is that so bad? This can get pricey – ranging anywhere from $12+ per person.

We had vouchers at my wedding and it worked out really well. The hotel’s restaurant had a good variety and guests enjoyed it. Our family loved the non-hassle of it – one less thing to worry about.

Breakfast with the room block. If you didn’t get a chance, check out our guides on hotel room blocks. This one shares tips on how to get guests to book their hotel room through your room block vs. with a 3rd party site online. This is a detailed guide about everything you need to know about room blocks. Basically you might be able to negotiate breakfast within the hotel room rate.

Hospitality Room – This is what most people do. Most hotels setup one of their meeting rooms, with a handful of tables and chairs and a buffet style breakfast provided by your caterer. You’ll be required to get coffee, tea and juices from the hotel. More and more venues are restricting the timing on the hospitality room. I’ve seen them setup to be open all weekend for guests to freely grab snacks and go. Venues are starting t put time limits on the hospitality room, making it available only for a short period of time i.e. a couple hours at breakfast and a couple hours in-between the ceremony and cocktail hour.

The reason is because the rooms need maintenance – the trash has to be picked up and taken out, cups replenished etc. and consumers generally don’t want to pay the labor fees for that. But the hotel incurs labor costs for that. By restricting the room’s availability, the hotel can control costs too.

Additionally venues are starting to restrict on bringing in your own food. A lot of consumers are bringing in Costco with big boxes of snacks and beverages surrounding the perimeter of the hospitality room. I already had one high end resort venue share with me that they’re no longer allowing their clients to do that.

Depending on what and how elaborate the meal is, the venue may charge a room rental fee + a per person fee, similar to how they charge for a lunch or dinner. Keep reading for ways to avoid those additional costs.

Grab N’ Go – Some venues work with you to minimize breakfast costs by allowing you to distribute grab n’ go breakfast. The caterer sets up pre-packaged lunch boxes. This way the hotel’s labor, materials and setup are virtually nothing, so they won’t charge you much – just for the beverages. Guests can take the ore-packaged meals to their rooms, sit by the pool etc.

Though we don’t advocate it (not environmentally friendly), some venues may allow you to serve breakfast in paper/plastic plates etc. so that you avoid the costs of utilizing their china, silverware etc. Just breakfast though, not for other meals.

Ceremony Site Breakfast – some venues will help you save money by setting up breakfast in the ceremony area. This feels like a cocktail hour, where guests can mingle or sit in the ceremony chairs (no tables to put their plates down). The cost savings come in because you’re not occupying additional function space at the venue. That way they don’t have all that setup. This is not common and generally not preferred by venues but they can do it. And there’s also an element of not being in the ceremony space before everything starts.

{Take Aways}

There are a few different ways to serve breakfast at your wedding venue. There will be costs incurred but you can keep them to a minimum as detailed above.

I hope this article has been helpful to you. If it has, let me know in the comments and you might like to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest – whatever your preferred media is, as we frequently publish articles to help making wedding planning just a little bit easier.

Congratulations and cheers!

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cover image: Lin & Jirsa