It's hard to say how I feel about catering until I actually have a price and know how it's being paid. Is it pre-pay? Each person pays for what they consume or is the bill split evenly? Maybe we should "shop around" and get some actual quotes. This is another reason why I like the take-out idea, calculating the price of pizza or whatever for x amount of people is super easy.

And we don't really need alcohol at the event. We can just go bar hopping later, get our drink on in a hotel room, or skip the alcohol altogether. As others have said before me