It's almost graduation here which is being awaited by restaurants. Particularly the graduating honor students, their families have saved money for the celebration. The choice is home cooking or catering or dining in restaurants. For the rich, it is a given to have it in the restaurant or in their home to be catered. But for simple celebration, I guess it would be prudent to just cook the food for the guests.
Cooking at home is always cheaper even if you have to hire a chef to help with the cooking. Not too long ago I'd have said since it's a one time thing a family should go out and celebrate and they should too [afterwards] but have all the guests "feast" at your home. It will save you a lot of money.
My family loves to cook at home. That's where we tend to eat for a lot of celebrations. My wife's family on the other hand always eats out at restaurants! A middle ground we do when we get together is what you say is for the rich, catering. BUT it is expensive yes indeed so we combine the two. The more delicate and harder things get catered, while we can make drinks and appetizers and desserts at home. Win/Win!
When I was the student, my family would usually celebrate in restaurants since we're a small family so we found it easier to just dine out after the graduation ceremonies and go home relaxed without any chores to worry about. Now that I am the one who has a kid about to graduate, my husband and I decided to just cook at home and invite our family members around. My husband has a big family plus his extended family members so it wouldn't be very wise if we do our celebration in a restaurant.
I have always found that celebrations like this are the best times to really get out those appetizer type foods that I always want to make but never heave a reason to make a whole lot of them. I do not really entertain guests all that often so I guess I tend to take advantages of places like this.
Here graduates usually have an open house that is a party with friends and family to celebrate. Most people will have it catered, but my parents cooked the food that was served since we did not have a lot of money. I opted not to have one to save them even more money. I just thought that the open house was too much work for my mom.
