Thanks for your note. Per your suggestion, I am starting a new thread regarding the entree planning for a Christening luncheon that my wife and I are planning to have for our son. Right now, we are aiming to plan for 50, but obviously we'll adapt the portions once we have received most of the RSVPs as the true number is likely to be higher.

For appetizers, we plan to have at least 400 passed hors d'oeuvres (stuffed mushrooms, petite quiches, scallops in bacon, crab rangoon, Thai chicken and cashew spring rolls and maybe pigs in a blanket) along with cheese plates and veggie plates. We think we'll be serving the appetizers for an hour and then will serve lunch.

The question we have is how to plan the main meals. In reading through some of your responses it seems like we should plan to prepare 50 servings of each dish because we don't know what people will eat. Our dinner menu is: grilled beef skewers, chicken cobb salad and salmon (smoked on a smoker -- a specialty of my father-in-law's and not too difficult to serve). For the kids, we will also have hot dogs and hamburgers as an option (and also are not sure how to plan for how many to have, but these are easy enough to freeze if we have extra). The sides we are planning for are: potato salad, Caesar salad, chilled grilled vegetables, and tomato, basil and mozzarella skewers. Finally, dessert is cake and a make-your-own sundae bar.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions you may have!

You have a lot of hot hor d's- if you are NOT having them catered, it is probably too many for a DIY party- the standard oven can only do about 40 every 10=15 minutes. For this size party, I would do no more than 3 in addition to the platters, and no more than 1 1x2 times the number of guests for each type.

grilled beef skewers, 1 pound raw per 3
salmon, smoked -1 pound per each 5
chicken cobb salad- suggest you put the chicken and the other toppings next to, not on, the salad, as there is no simple way to put it out in one platter and have it easy to serve yourself. Also, this will really slow down the buffet line- put it separate preferably first or else last so other people can easily skip it while folks think about what they want.

potato salad, 2 gallons (18-20 pounds potatoes) per 50
Caesar salad, use the plan for 100 list, do 1/2 for 60.
chilled grilled vegetables, 12 pounds ready to serve per 50
tomato, basil and mozzarella skewers, these are cute, but very time consuming to prepare, and don't keep too well. Consider doing platter presentation alternating slices of tomato and mozzarella, scattering the basil over. Look at these presentations:

Do a google search, search tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and click on the images section- dozens of alternatives.

Hamburgers and hot dogs- I would skip these! Do the meatballs in a kid-friendly sauce, have nice rolls that can be dinner rolls or make meatball subs. If you feel you must, how about bun size Polish sausage? You might also do 1 pack of field roast sausage (vegetarian) for any vegetarians.

cake- a full sheet or 2 layer half sheet is plenty, makes 60 servings
make-your-own sundae bar, see the ice cream sundae bar page, do just for 50.