By B.A. Nilsson

“The wedding is going to be very tasteful,” my friend declared, “and you’re definitely invited.” He went on to describe his vision of the event: a quartet of parents, a dozen close friends, a sit-down dinner at a favorite restaurant. More of a second-marriage scenario, I thought, but good for them.

With such a small number of guests, you have an infinite number of catering possibilities to choose among. Catering options are legion, allowing you to place the reception at almost any desirable facility—and you probably have enough budget leeway to choose a fairly fancy level of entrée.

This also means you can choose a more intimate restaurant as an onsite venue, preferably a place with a separate room for your party. Keep in mind that every good restaurant has a template in place based on what works for them. Familiarize yourself with it so that you can make whatever changes will make the event work better for you. It’s your wedding, after all, a fact that too often gets obscured in the hurly-burly or drowned out by the ululations of the Bridal Mother.

Until the government socializes our weddings, money will dictate the breadth of your celebration. How much to allocate for the reception will always be tricky, especially when there’s a bride to clothe. I suspect that the formality of the reception runs in direct proportion to the formality of the gown, so that even though less-fancy duds will leave more dough for the dinner, the bride and groom might be just as happy with a living-room feast.

I’ve seen an absolutely gorgeous spread laid out in a well-appointed home. While the line of least resistance is to go with the house of one of the wedding principals, there’s less chaos potential when you borrow somebody else’s place. And don’t, even if you’re Emeril, Rachael and Jamie Oliver combined, think of catering your own meal. This is a time when you need to sit back and be served.

“Listen,” my friend said the following week. “Her sister’s husband’s family really has to be invited, and my mother said my Aunt Sophie will never speak to her again if we leave her out. And Sophie said we have to also invite some cousins . . . anyway, it’s probably going to be about 60 people, so we’re moving it to a larger place.”

Catering, especially onsite, is a vital component of many a restaurant, so that special rooms are maintained for such events. Sometimes a restaurant will forego its regular business to hold your event, or open on what’s usually a dark day. Given the choice, I’d rather be the only such event in the facility. There’s something impersonal (to say the least) about making your way down a banquet house hallway, past party after DJ-enriched party, en route to your own event.

If you’re deeply in love with an offsite venue, make it your own, although I wouldn’t trust even my closest friends to behave themselves in a fancy place. Especially when there’s anything breakable involved.

How much less stressful to party in a place that’s prepared for the results of the party dynamic. From a traffic strategy perspective, your guests will enjoy easier access to the food and to one another, and the menu planning tends to be simpler.

You’re now probably spending less per guest, so you’re choosing from a limited list of options. Fewer choices means less stress. Less stress and good champagne promise a happier honeymoon. If you must offer your guests a entrée choice, keep them few. Chicken. Fish. Something vegetarian. The worst meal I’ve ever suffered was the vegetarian choice at a local banquet house, so make sure you know in advance what you’re getting.

Or choose a buffet. This gives the guests more choice and the sense of getting your money’s worth, but make sure the house really knows how to handle such an event. It’s discouraging to abandon my place on the slow-moving line at the carving station just as Table 8 gets called, sending a herd of 12 galloping to the chafing dishes I was just about to hit.

If you have no personal experience with the place and don’t think you can get some, quiz the banquet manager. You’ll sense pretty quickly if they know what they’re doing.

“I’m sorry,” my friend complained. “It’s really getting out of hand. I didn’t realize how many people stood to get offended if they weren’t invited. Some of them I didn’t even know existed. Looks like we’re going to have to scale down on the music and open it up to a couple of hundred.”

Now you’re looking at the factories, the restaurants that routinely send out a few hundred meals on a Saturday night. They’re used to this, they’re good at it—but you’re not necessarily getting the best food and service. Again, it’s a matter of research. Don’t confine your investigation to a session in the banquet manager’s office, looking at menus. Get a look at a banquet in action. And if you’re familiar with the restaurant only from ordering dinner for two, be aware that dinner for 200 may lack some of the finish you like.

“So it looks like we worked it all out. I never knew I had relatives in North Dakota, but there it is. Thing is, we’re going to have to keep it family-only. Do you mind if we don’t invite you after all?”