We were expecting a house full of guests. The occasion? My eldest daughter’s confirmation. With 18 people coming to town to celebrate, we knew we were going to have to do some entertaining.

Our original plan was to say the heck with frugality and take everyone out to eat at our new favorite restaurant in town. But then fate stepped in–the restaurant refused our reservation. Their reason? They don’t take reservations so that they can keep tables available for walk-in diners. (Hmm, turn away 18 confirmed paying customers in hopes that you’ll get on-the-fly folks who happen to be hungry? I realize I live in a tourist town with heavy foot traffic on weekends, but that seems like an awful business plan to me.)

OK, so on to plan B–have everyone back at our house, and bring in food to save us the effort of cooking. But when we got the catering menus from two local places, we just about had a sticker-shock heart attack: $50 for a tray of ziti? $45 for a fruit tray? Um, I don’t think so.

So, on to plan C–buy what we need to feed everyone as if we’d actually catered it, and hopefully we would come out ahead financially in the end.

And we did.

For $200 we put together four or so trays of cold cuts, rolls and cheeses, along with a gigantic fruit salad, a large cake (purchased for $20 at the supermarket), enough soda to drown a soccer team, and two cases of wine. In addition, my husband made three huge trays of ziti, and we served two of them that day. We still have another tray in the freezer, which we could use for dinner one night this week, and plenty of rolls for making lunches. While the cold cuts ran out last week, the blocks of cheese are still going strong. In fact, with this past weekend’s heat wave, I had fruit salad, cheese and crackers (and a glass of white wine) for dinner one night–all courtesy of the leftovers from our entertaining menu.

And this was all for $200 or a little over $11 per person. We never could have gotten away with such a cheap affair if we’d gone out. Sure, making all of the food took time and effort on our part. But it was quite satisfying when people complimented us on the meal to be able to say “This is homemade” rather than “We ordered in.”

So the next time you need to entertain the troops and you’re tempted to throw caution and frugality to the wind, take a page from our playbook and make the time to cater it yourself. Your bottom line (and your belly) will thank you.