The headline figure first: wedding catering averaged $80 per person in The Knot's Real Weddings Study (2024 weddings). Real quotes spread wide around it — roughly $20–$40 per person for a casual buffet, $50–$150 or more for a plated dinner, before tax, service charges and staffing. If you're feeding 150 people, that per-person number, multiplied, is your budget. This guide is for everyone else.
The same math, at small-wedding scale
| Guests | At $40/person (buffet) | At $80/person (average) | At $120/person (plated) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | $400 | $800 | $1,200 |
| 20 | $800 | $1,600 | $2,400 |
| 30 | $1,200 | $2,400 | $3,600 |
| 50 | $2,000 | $4,000 | $6,000 |
Then the add-ons land: service charges and gratuity commonly add 18–25%, plus sales tax, plus staffing and rentals if your venue doesn't own tables and chairs. A $2,400 catering line for 30 guests is honestly a $3,000 line by the time the invoice settles. Budget that way and catering stops being the ambush it is for most couples.
The small-wedding trap: minimums
Here is the paragraph that matters. Many caterers and venues set food-and-beverage minimums — a floor you pay whether or not your guests eat that much. A $3,500 minimum is a rounding error at 150 guests and a budget-breaker at 25. So when you talk to any venue or caterer, the first question for a small wedding is not “what's your per-person price?” It's “what is your minimum for a group our size, on our date?” Weekday dates often carry lower minimums — one reason so many Florida small-wedding packages in our venue guide are Monday–Thursday offers.
Three ways small weddings actually feed people
1. The venue's own catering or package
Simplest, and priced per person or as a package. Restaurant venues shine here — a private room at a place like Boatyard in Fort Lauderdale or Sea Watch on the Ocean comes with a kitchen, staff and a bar already attached, so your “catering” is a restaurant minimum rather than a caterer's truck and a staffing invoice.
2. Outside catering, at a venue that allows it
This is where a local caterer, a restaurant drop-off or a food truck can undercut in-house pricing — but only where the venue allows outside food. Most venues don't publish their policy. These Florida venues do:
- Under the Oaks, Tampa — the FAQ states “Outside catering is welcome.”
- The Celebration Banquet Hall, Orlando — allows outside catering and bring-your-own liquor, served by its certified bartenders.
- Lakeview Gardens, Umatilla — “never required to use an in-house-only vendor.”
- The Barn at Crescent Lake, Odessa — its Lakehouse Vows package welcomes your own food and drinks.
- 9 Aviles, St. Augustine — à la carte couples choose their own vendors from an approved list.
The opposite exists too, and it's better to know before you fall in love with a room: Little Rose Chapel in Miami permits no catering or full meals at all, and the Powel Crosley Estate's elopements allow no food. Both are ceremony-only by design — the wedding dinner happens afterwards, somewhere else, and plenty of couples prefer it that way.
3. No catering at all
A ceremony-only wedding followed by a restaurant reservation is a legitimate format, not a compromise: it's how most sub-$1,000 Florida elopements in our census are structured. Twenty people at a good restaurant, at menu prices, beats a mediocre buffet at wedding prices almost every time. My own bias is showing, but the arithmetic backs it.
Bottom line
Use $80 per person as your planning number, $40 as your buffet floor, and treat the venue's minimum — not the per-person price — as the figure that decides whether a venue is actually small-wedding friendly. For the venue side of the budget, see how much a wedding venue costs.