Wedding Catering in Cornwall

Browse wedding caterers across Cornwall and enquire directly - plus how to read a per-head price properly, what service style does to your staffing bill, and what to settle about drink before you book.

Catering is usually the largest single line in a wedding budget and the least consistently quoted. Two caterers can send you a per-head figure an hour apart and mean quite different things by it. Party catering sits at a different scale entirely - the Cornwall cost guide has those ranges - so this page stays on weddings and on getting quotes you can line up beside each other.

Service style, and what it costs you in staff

The food is only part of that difference. Serving a hundred plates at once takes a room full of staff; a van takes two people. Ask each caterer how many staff their quote assumes and for how many hours, and what the bill does if your timings slip by an hour - which, at a wedding, they generally do.

Reading a per-head price properly

• Whether staff, service and travel are inside the per-head figure or added underneath it.
• Whether VAT is included. An unnoticed 20% on a five-figure line is the most expensive assumption in wedding planning.
• What counts as a head: children are usually priced differently, and your photographer, band and coordinator will expect feeding.
• Whether evening food is inside the price or a second per-head charge on the same guests.
• Who provides crockery, glassware, linen and cake-cutting - the venue, the caterer, or a hire company nobody has booked yet.
• The minimum numbers the quote assumes, and what the per-head price becomes if your final count lands below it.

Drink, corkage and supplying your own

If the venue runs a bar you will usually be buying from it. Where you can bring your own, corkage is what the venue charges to serve it - commonly £10 to £20 a bottle of wine, often at a different rate for sparkling. Do that arithmetic before assuming your own supply is cheaper, because at the top of the range it frequently is not. Ask whether corkage applies to the welcome drink and the toast as well as the tables, whether glass hire and washing are charged separately, and who holds the licence if the bar is yours rather than theirs.

Dietary requirements and final numbers

Ask when your final numbers are due and what happens to the price if a guest drops out after that point. Collect dietary requirements with the RSVP rather than chasing them in the last fortnight, and hand the caterer a list with names against it rather than a count - on the day, somebody has to know which plate goes to which chair. Ask how allergies are handled in the kitchen, and whether a vegan or gluten-free main is a dish in its own right or the same plate with something taken off it.

Figures on this page are a guide only. What you actually pay depends on the supplier, the time of year, and what each quote includes - always confirm the details directly with the supplier.