Kit Roberts
A bride has received a very mixed reception after deciding to serve takeaway food at her wedding.
Planning a wedding can be an incredibly stressful experience as couples understandably want their special day to be as enjoyable as possible. But putting together the perfect nuptials can quickly become very pricey.
With the dreaded 'wedding tax' pushing up prices far higher than they would be for another event, the temptation to just order some pizza for everyone's dinner can be understandable.
And TikToker Madison Mulkey seems to have done just that, though with US fast-food chain Chili's instead.
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Instead of hiring a caterer to serve food to her guests, she put out a hefty order to the takeaway, costing a total $1,950 - £1,560 - for her 99 guests.
While that seems like an awful lot of money to be spent on food, wedding planning website WeddingWire estimates that the average cost of catering at a wedding is actually $4,000 (£3,200), adding that most couples in the US pay between $1,800 (£1,445) and $7,000 (£5,600) to feed their guests.
So it seems that Madison actually saved a lot of money on feeding her guests in this way, not accounting for drinks.
In a now-viral TikTok video, which has garnered more than 1.5 million views, she explained: “We served Chili’s at our wedding and this is how much we spent."
“Our total cost for our wedding food was $1,950 for 99 guests.
“So let’s talk about what went into serving Chili’s at our wedding. First of all, we loved the price point, I mean, really can’t beat that price point. ... It’s insane that we only spent that much money for our wedding food.”
However, despite the low cost many people in the comments were less than impressed with her way of spending a little less on her nuptials, with some of them being wedding planners.
One wrote: "As a wedding planner that is so unfair to the planner and servers if people do this. Hire a delivery pick up driver and a specific food pre cook."
While another said: "All I can think about is how stressful this must have been for the staff".
And a third wrote: "Stressing of the staff and having reheated food to avoid the delivery fee was crazy".
However, not everyone was critical of the move, with several people also coming out in support and even saying they would do it at their wedding.
One wrote: "We did chipotle for about 200 people, put it in fancier containers and people thought we got a custom taco bar."
And a final said: "Normalise this! Weddings are so out of control. Such a great idea!"