Weddingbee boards

I need help ladies! Has anyone already had or plans to have their wedding reception with all food stations? If so, did you organize by type of food (pasta station, etc.) or did you have a theme? Did the venue charge by price/head or price/item/station? And finally, what is the going rate for these stations. My fiance and I have decided to coordinate the stations by places important to us (i.e. NYC, where we got engaged). We want to set more of a cocktail party feel but the venue is insisting that we need to pay for every person to have at least two servings of each small plate, we have a total of 19 small plates. We think that's ridiculous as not everyone likes sushi or duck and even if they did, that's almost 40 small plates/guest, who eats that much, especially at a wedding!?

 Any expertise or recommendations out there?

 We'd also love any ideas on presentation and dishware offered, pics would be great!

We are doing hors d' ouevres and stations. Our caterer said to expect each guest to eat roughly 6 hor d'ouevres. As for the stations we are having a potato martini bar, roasted chicken, a fruit/crudite station, and an exotic cheese station. Anyhow...with the chicken station we are counting each person but for the other stations we are only counting 75% of the people.

If we would have gotten the beef station we would have to count each person for that as well.

Our caterer is charging by the dozen for the hor d'ouevres and by the person for the stations. For 100 people we are paying roughly $5000 (the food is only $3500 but the rest is from taxes and service charges. Price definitely depends on your location. 

 Good luck.

we are having a sushi station, italian station, and a carving station. The venue broke it down per person. We're cool with that

We are doing three stations: American Seasonal (fall wedding), Italian, and Spanish Tapas, although our caterer said that all their stations are fully customizeable, we were happy to go with some of the ones they already had in place.  We are being charged $48 per person total. 

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences. They originally tried to charge me $137 per person, not including alcohol, tax or gratuity. I thought that was absolutely ridiculous and asked to see a price per item since the food station option was not a current offering of the hotel and they obviously just made-up the prices to see if I'd let it pass. Remember I created and provided my own menu, I choose items that, while seemingly fancy, were made up of relatively inexpensive ingredients (i.e. polenta bites with carmelized mushrooms or asparagus tips - polenta is made with cornmeal and water). One station is the Kansas station featuring beef tenderloin (small portion), mini twice baked potato, green bean bundles wrapped with yellow squash ribbon and gourmet mac & cheese. Another is our Hawaii station with crab & mango shooters, sushi rolls, kalua pork potstickers and garlic shrimp kebobs with tropical salsa. We have two other similar stations and passed heavy hors d'oeurves during cocktail hour. This is where I'm struggling, I can live with the price/item (although pretty unreasonable) but the hotel is trying to force us to pay for 48items/guest with is totally unrealistic, especially because our items include 4 oz beef tenderloin, thai chicken skewers, lamb lollipops and shrimp kebobs in addition to all of the other heavy starches and savory veggie dishes. I should be able to dictate quantity since I'm paying for it, right?! And this is in Colorado, not Cali or NYC!