The Everything Wedding Shower Book 2

If you are serving cold cuts or a buffet, you'd want to roughly calculate 3 ounces of meat per person and 1 1/2 servings of bread.

If you are serving just canapes and deli plates with carrot sticks and other finger food, you can probably figure on about 1 1/2 cups of food, loosely chopped, per person. That will give you a bit extra, but it's easy to figure. For instance, if you can fit one cut-up taquito, a few nuts, three carrot sticks, and two cherry tomatoes into 1 1/2 cups, you've got it about right. (P.S. -- When serving finger foods, use six-inch plates, not the big ones, which encourage waste and screw up your planning per person.) People eat less in the summer and at certain times of day. If you've ever been to a buffet, you may have noticed that the cheap, bulky items are always put first, before the meats and expensive stuff. You can set up your line the same way -- put the pasta and green and fruit salads at the beginning of the line and the meats later.