Numbers and planning · 2026 wedding season
How many plates you are actually paying for
The number is not the guest count, and the gap is where the money goes.
What it actually is
Caterers quote per plate against a guaranteed minimum. Real consumption at a multi-counter Indian wedding runs 1.3–1.6 plates per attending guest, attendance runs 70–85% of accepted RSVPs, and accepted RSVPs run well below invitations. Each of those three factors is usually guessed.
We have not published a price here because we could not ground one honestly. Ask three vendors — an invented number would be worse than none.
When it works
- You have a real RSVP number rather than an invitation count
- You are negotiating the guaranteed minimum, which is the actual lever
- You can give the caterer a per-function count instead of one number
The part nobody else prints
How this goes wrong
Guaranteeing against invitations sent rather than replies received is the single most expensive mistake in the catering contract, and it is made before anyone has thought about it.
Every idea here is easier than telling three hundred people about it.
You can book all of this and still spend the month chasing headcounts. That part is what we do — the invitations, the replies, the rooms, the arrivals, on WhatsApp, with a person making the first call and a person checking every count.
Launching for the 2026 wedding season. No wedding has run for a paying customer yet.