We consider ourselves very lucky that our venue, Prairie Production, has absolutely no restrictions on the catering companies that may work in the space. This is very often not the case, so remember that choosing your venue may also limit your catering options. Regardless, ask your venue coordinator to recommend caterers they have worked with in the past (you may be given a list of required or recommended caterers to choose from).
In our case, Chrissy considered our budget and taste (literally, what type of food we would like :-)) and requested proposals for us from 5 catering companies:
Berghoff Catering
Blue Plate
Food For Thought
Jewell Events Catering
J & L Catering
After we reviewed the proposals, we set up tastings with our 3 personal favorites: Blue Plate, Food for Thought, and Jewell. Note: tastings are the greatest part of wedding planning, and also a great time to reward anyone in your family or wedding party who has been getting stressed out by the planning along with you. Don’t impose on the caterer and bring your entire party, obviously, but one or two people in addition to the two of you may serve to remind you that there will be other people eating the food besides you!
After the tastings, we narrowed down our personal preferences to Blue Plate and Food For Thought (I keep saying our personal preferences because I have nothing bad to say about all of these excellent catering companies – it was just a matter of preferring some courses over others, and your mileage may vary). Some more rounds of debate finally yielded our choice: Food For Thought!