Food for an afternoon wedding

koneko

We recently went to look round a possible venue for our wedding and they have since sent us an itemised quote of various elements that we were interested in pricing up, but the food side of things has left me with a dilemma. We have a fairly large family between us and after doing some rough figures we got a quote based on 90 people for the ceremony and meal and 120 for the evening.

We want to have a mid afternoon wedding with the meal (hog roast or bbq) at around 5.30/6pm and the evening party guests arriving around 8pm. The thing we aren't sure about is whether to have an evening buffet as the day guests probably won't want much more food so there will probably be a lot of wastage. The cost for an evening buffet is over half the cost of the actual wedding meal so its a big chunk of money.

What are you doing/if anything food wise for evening guests?

LEJC

Your numbers for both reception and evening are pretty similar so in terms of food you might want to think about something light in the afternoon....and hold the reception meal later so it covers all your guests

Possible options
ceremony followed by light afternoon tea...this would allow you some structure and the opportunity for something possibly sat down so you could have the traditional things like speeches and cutting the cake if thats your thing
or...if you want to leave the formalities until everyone is there in the evening you could opt for something like canapes and nibbles with a glass of bubbly with time to mingle before your main reception of hog roast in the evening

Or alternatively opt for a late ceremony followed by photos that moves straight into the evening reception...its surprising how quickly the time goes and people dont like to feel rushed at weddings...theres always someone they havent seen for a long time and its a good opportunity to spend some time mingling...so dont feel obliged that youve got to give your guests a daytime reception and then an evening buffet too!

You could even look at providing some entertainment after the ceremony to fill the time instead of a meal....I went to a wonderful wedding a while back where it was an afternoon ceremony followed by a casino with personalised wedding chips so it wasnt gambling with real money..admittedly the package was quite expensive ...but nowhere near as expensive as a reception....that was then followed by speeches and a lovely hot and cold buffet

FBaby

What we have done is order the evening buffet for half the number we expect to come. We will be having our main meal around 2-3 pm, a three course meal, so don't expect they will be that keen for more food. Additionally, we expect a number of people to have eaten before coming to the evening do, so all in all we think that should do it. The hotel have said they would be happy to provide sandwishes and other snacks if we totally run out of food.

burnoutbabe

is it a weekend thing? then probably okay to not have food and warn people to eat before they came. (though most people would be hungry again around 9ish so people may leave earlier or get very drunk if nothing to mop it up)

if its a week time thing, then your guests would probably be coming from work, no time to eat so would generally be hungry (or have to go and eat first and then arrive late).

koneko

burnoutbabe wrote: »

is it a weekend thing? then probably okay to not have food and warn people to eat before they came. (though most people would be hungry again around 9ish so people may leave earlier or get very drunk if nothing to mop it up)

if its a week time thing, then your guests would probably be coming from work, no time to eat so would generally be hungry (or have to go and eat first and then arrive late).

Its a Saturday, so evening guests (who won't be arriving until 8 onwards) would have plenty of time to eat before they come, my main concerns are that some would be expecting food in the evening, but the day guests probably won't finish eating until about 7 so won't be likely to want more food and a good proportion of the evening guests will eat before they come (I would for an 8pm party). I might try asking the venue if they will do the buffet for half the number of people.

A friend of mine just did sausages on sticks, chicken wings and potato wedges at hers, which was more than enough to soak up some wine.

I'm not keen on pushing back the meal to later in the evening as we will have a lot of under 10's who will be better off being fed earlier, we also want to do the traditional speeches and cake cutting with the meal before evening guests turn up. If I'm honest, the evening guests are just OH's work friends and people we feel we ought to invite despite them not being close friends as they invited us to theirs.

74jax

We got married at 4 with a drinks reception. We only had 30 to the ceremony but around 90 to night time, so we opted for a hot buffet - chilli, curry etc and paid for 65 people. There was plenty of food.

We did warn the 4pm people there was no meal, just drinks afterwards.

74jax

I don't think people would 'expect to be served food' automatically. I've just checked my two invites, one says buffet at 8pm and the other is 'drinks and dancing til late with as much cake as you can eat'. I'd just word your invites well.

wendz86

We are getting married at 2.30 then having a bbq at 4.30 . We are having a 'ploughmans' buffet at around 9 that worked out a lot cheaper than the normal buffet the venue did.

I think as long as you let people know they wont get food in the evening they wont mind.

nuatha

We got married at 2:00, had a substantial number of canapes available for guests from 3 and a buffet from 6:30pm. Seemed to work fairly well. Our guests were invited to as much of the day as they were able to attend, being a workday we'd expected that a sizeable number would only be there from 5:00 onwards but as it happened most of our guests were with us all day.
We'd told people what was happening food wise so they could have lunch before the wedding if they wished.

mum2one

sounds like a good idea to the bbq/hog in the afternoon, the last wedding I went to 7 yrs ago... posh hotel the bride got married at 2.30pm, followed by canapies and drinks - we all ended up staying at the hotel for the day time, 10 miles out of town and didn't know times etc - then we realsied that the food was a bbq at the evening - wasn't served to 10pm......
We were starving, as had no dinner getting ready to get there - I got the 1st round of drinks for me and my friend 2 large glasses red wine - the barmaid gave us large glasses - I got £10 ready she looked - £15 for 2 glasses

A lot of the guests were buying bowls of chips £8 for a bowl!!

For the evening I would order for about 3/4 of the numbers coming x

pinkpenguin_inshoes

I think like over people have saidshnthe hog roast back until 9pm and maybe light buffet or afternoon tea for your day guess. I would normally presume that there would be a buffet and not eat before an evening do, coz I love a good buffet.