How many guests can your budget actually feed?

Per head is a floor, not a preference

Caterers price from ingredient cost, staffing and time. Below a certain point the service cannot be delivered at all, which is why quotes stop rather than shrink. In Sydney the cheapest genuine event styles — food trucks, drop-off grazing, simple cocktail service — start around $35 a head. Casual birthday catering can run $25–40, and children's party packages $18–25.

Some things do not shrink with the guest list

A bakery will not take a $70 cake order and a mobile bar will not send staff for less than a call-out. These minimums mean a small guest count does not scale costs down forever.

• Cake: expect a floor near $150 regardless of head count
• Mobile bar: a two-hour minimum, commonly $600 and up
• Kids' entertainers: a flat hour covering roughly 22 children, then about $5 a child

Three honest ways out of a short budget

When the arithmetic does not work, there are only three levers, and all of them are better than discovering the problem through a supplier's rejection.

• Shorten the guest list — the fastest lever, because catering and drinks both scale
• Change the service style — grazing and food trucks cost a fraction of plated service
• Move the date — midweek and winter dates in Sydney can save 20–40%

What a realistic split looks like

Once the per-head floor is covered, the remainder is what your styling, photography and entertainment actually have to share. Planning it in that order — people fed first, everything else from what is left — is what stops a budget collapsing two weeks out.