The groomsmen's BBQ: the cheapest good day you can give him

There is a version of the bachelor party, or the afternoon after the fitting, or just the last proper get-together before the wedding, that costs a fraction of everything else and gets remembered more fondly than most of it.

Somebody’s backyard. Good meat. Proper chairs. No time limit.

It is not the flashy option and it wins constantly, for three reasons that have nothing to do with money and one that does.

Why it beats a restaurant for a group this size

You can hear each other. A restaurant table of twelve is four separate conversations, and the two men at the far end never speak to each other all night. A backyard is one group that reshuffles itself every twenty minutes. For a party where half the men have not met, this is the whole difference.

There is no clock. Restaurants need the table back. The best hour of the evening is usually the one after the food, when nobody is doing anything in particular, and that is exactly the hour a restaurant asks you to leave.

Nobody is performing. Men talk differently standing near a grill than they do seated in a row under a light.

And it is about half the cost per head. Which matters more than anyone says out loud, because the bachelor party is the number most likely to price somebody out of his best friend’s wedding.

The kosher version, in the GTA

If the groom keeps kosher, this is genuinely the easiest format to get right, because you are not trying to find a restaurant that works for everybody.

Confirm COR certification first, before anything else. The Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Toronto is the certifying body most of the community works with, and it is the first question to ask a caterer rather than the last. Thornhill and the Bathurst corridor are well served for this and a good caterer will handle a group of twelve without blinking.

Catering beats cooking, at this size. Somebody’s uncle offering to do the grill is lovely and works fine for eight. Past about twelve it stops being a favour and starts being a job, and the man doing it misses the party he came to. Smoked meat travels and holds well, which is exactly what you want for a backyard.

If you are cooking it yourselves, sort the kashrut of the grill before the day, not on it. Whether the barbecue has been used for anything else, and whether it needs kashering, is not a conversation to have while fifteen men stand around hungry. Ask the groom’s rav or the caterer in advance; both are used to the question.

Have a proper non-meat option and enough of it. There is always one, sometimes two, and running out is the detail people remember.

Check the calendar before you invite anyone

This is the mistake groups make every year, and it is entirely avoidable.

The three weeks and sefirah rule out a celebration outright. Chol hamoed works but changes what is possible. The fast days are obvious once you look and invisible until you do.

Friday is out. Groups plan Friday-afternoon things every year, then discover half the party has to leave by four. If the crowd is mixed at all, Sunday daytime is nearly always the right answer.

And Toronto’s daylight is short for half the year. A December afternoon is dark by five, which is not fatal — a fire pit and a patio heater fix it — but it should be a decision rather than a surprise.

What to actually cook

Two rules, and then it is hard to get wrong.

One thing that takes all day, and everything else easy. A brisket or a shoulder going slowly from the morning gives the afternoon a centre of gravity. Everything else — sausages, wings, chicken, whatever is quick — comes off the grill in the last half hour. This is far less work than eight things needing attention at once, and it produces a much better meal.

Cook more than you think, in one direction only. Men eat more standing up than sitting down, and there is always someone who arrived straight from work having not eaten since breakfast. Leftover brisket is a gift. Running short at six o’clock is a problem you cannot solve.

Beyond that: good bread, two or three salads that can be made the day before, something pickled to cut the fat, and one dessert somebody’s mother made. That is a complete meal and none of it is difficult.

Drinks, and the part worth planning

Get a proper cooler and fill it in the morning. Warm drinks at four o’clock is the single most common failure of a backyard afternoon and the easiest one to prevent.

Then the bit nobody plans and everybody needs: decide how people are getting home before the first drink, not after the last one. Cars arranged in advance, or one designated driver who is genuinely happy about it and gets his share covered by the group. It costs very little and it is the difference between a relaxed afternoon and one where four men are quietly counting.

The best version of this

Put it on the back half of a day that already has a front half.

Get the party measured at two — everyone at once, which saves the best man about five weeks of chasing — and eat at four. The group is already together, already in a good mood, and nobody has had to organise two separate occasions.

That is one afternoon, one set of cars, and roughly the cost of a mediocre dinner out. It produces both the suits and the day, and it is the version people describe afterwards as the best part of the whole wedding year.

What it costs, roughly

Per head, a catered backyard BBQ for a group of twelve in the GTA lands well under what the same group would spend on a restaurant evening, before you count the drinks that a restaurant charges four times over.

The real saving is not the food, though. It is that a backyard afternoon does not have a minimum. Nobody is priced out of it, which means the friend who has been quietly worrying about the cost of this whole year gets to come to the good part without it costing him anything at all.

That is worth more than the venue.

If the party is being suited anyway, get everyone measured in the same afternoon. One session at the Vaughan studio, everyone measured by Sam himself, a firm price per man before anything is cut — then go and eat.

Book an appointment or call 647-458-0711 and say how many of you there are.