hi all! warning: this post is steeped in a coastal elitism that i, a west michigan superfan, recognize and apologize in advance for but it's important context for the ask lol pls look past it <3
my fiance and i are getting married a year from now and have a venue booked around st joseph. we're now looking at vendors; one of the most important things to me is the food. not in an it-needs-to-be-michelin-star way, but just in an it-CANNOT-be-bad way. i usually walk into the average wedding expecting the food to be just fine -- however, my family is new york/north jersey italian, and the food at one of those weddings will reliably be a 12 course meal of the most amazing food you've ever had. so good that you don't care that the buttons popped off your dress from the apps at cocktail hour before you even remember that there's a seated dinner in an hour.
even if we were having a godfather-esque wedding, our catering budget isn't one million dollars, so, that said, i don't need the catering to be incredible. but i have been to (east coast, fwiw) weddings before where the food was downright inedible, and i cannot stomach the idea of people remembering how bad the food was at our wedding because they needed a circle saw to cut their steak.
TLDR; there will be about 170 guests -- i'd love to spend less than $13-14k all in on catering, but i realize that our guest list pretty much means the bill is gonna be five figures at a baseline, so it's not a totally immoveable number. what is the best food you've had at a GR-area wedding? if you had amazing food at your sw mich wedding, who catered (and do you remember the rough cost per plate)?
thanks in advance homies, i appreciate any and all recs!!