If you are all sharing a large platter of food do you take your full share before passing on?

There wasn’t enough food.

For the food, I think I might have assumed you didn't want more than that if you'd not taken your share.

For the wine, that's not on though, whenever I pour another glass I'd always check whether anyone else wanted a top-up.

It sounds like there wasn't enough food for 8 if people were still left hungry.

If your side took some and passed it over i expect they just thought you'd taken all you wanted

They should have checked but maybe they thought what's left was theirs rather than it being a game of pass the plate.

Ah, okay, I see 4 of you took a quarter. I think you probably underserved yourselves a bit. Yeah, these things can be tricky to judge well. Especially on something without an obvious portion size. Sometimes you graze of seconds, sometimes you serve yourself an eighth of the dish and eat that.

I was caught like this once with a third person who said she didn't want any of our main order. She then proceeded to snaffle part of mine and I regretted not taking my full half!

It's annoying, but you aren't eating at a wedding for the purpose of survival, so ultimately not a big deal.

I think with the booze it is tricky at events set up like this. You never know if you should make your glass last or, if once a bottle is empty, the caterers will replace it with a full one.
Your table mates sound thoughtless. I think I would have had to have made a passive aggressive comment along the lines of "Let's hope the pudding is served individually or I'll be left with a small portion of that as well as the mains" but then I am a nasty, hungry person.

I think OP means the 4 in her family took only a quarter of the food, not just her and her DH.

If I didn't know the other people well I'd probably take my full share the first time. Just to avoid having to keep going back which could be awkward, or to avoid your situation where I would feel hard done by.

I tend not to eat much in these type of gatherings due to anxiety. So tbh I'd be the one guzzling wine but not really putting much food on my plate. I guess hopefully that means I'm only half greedy?! 🤣

I don't think there's a set etiquette, which is the problem here. You took a small amount expecting to have seconds. They thought everyone was taking their full share from the off so presumed what had been passed along to them was their portion and you had already taken what you wanted. I've been in the situation before, and on these larger round tables you can't really see what platters look like before they come to you, so I don't blame them.

It's a weird set-up, I wouldn't expect a sharing platter to be for an entire table of 8, it would be more sensible to have 2 platters for 4 people. The way you did it would be the considerate way. It seems like they thought that you were done and they could finish the rest off but the wine is really inconsiderate.

What was the food issue? 2 people took a quarter of it between them for a table of 8? That works in the sense of you took your full share.

Then the wine it sounds like they went quite hard. Did sister drink quite slowly? That would probably affect my answer there. I wouldn't necessarily hold back lots on wine if someone else was drinking particularly slowly. Eventually table wine runs out and you have to go to the bar.

I would take the full amount I wanted, but no more than my share- so if there were 10 people and I were hungry I would take a tenth. I think you underserved yourselves so you can't complain.

One large platter between eight sounds a recipe for disaster. So four of you shared a quarter of the food and the other four had the remaining three quarters? You should have taken your half while you had the platter! But it does sound as if the platters weren’t very generously filled in the first place.

It sounds like you were considerate about the other sides ‘needs’ and the other side didn’t think about it at all - may not have been deliberate, just a bit thoughtless! I would’ve thought the main problem is there just wasn’t enough food or drink.

I've read your post 2x and still don't understand,been a long day! So there wasn't enough food?