What's the worst meal you've been served at a wedding?

[Higgeldypiggeldy35]

I'm veggie so unfortunately have had my fair share of shitty wedding meals as the vegetarians often seem to get shafted but this one takes the biscuit. Fancy wedding, very expensive and exclusive venue, meat eaters had a feast and it looked amazing, I was served......a grilled mushroom, and it was cold. This place is probably £100 per head at the very least and the best they could rustle up for a vegetarian was a mushroom. So, make me feel better, what's the worst meal you've been served?
This is meant to be light hearted 🐱

A sit down buffet (covid), I read the menu before hand and it looked lovely, it was also £30 a head...

We had some sandwhich triangles, one cheese, one prawn, one cucumber and one ham, one lettuce leaf each on a shared plate, plus some other random and awfully done bits and pieces. The children's pizza was some weird bread with tomato puree smeared on with barely melted cheese on top. The puddings were oddly shaped and 2p sized pieces of cheesecake and brownie slices, one brownie was the width of my pinkie finger and the other was a twice the thickness, not enough for the table regardless of size. Oh and the vegans had jam sandwhiches. ... Yes ... A jam sandwhich ...like toddlers would have, it was cut up into small triangles also 😂. How the bride managed to keep it together I've no idea.

My brother did a beautiful wedding with an amazing bbq. My vegetarian daughter got half a jacket potato and a plain roll. We were told there’d be veggie options. I was devastated for her.

Another wedding, it was clearly an Aldi buffet. Not enough food.

Close relative got married in a hotel. They invited everyone. Wedding was at 12. Probably 80 guests watched them marry, after which there was a 'sorting' where 60 or so of us were ushered into a bar area. Off the couple go for photos, we can see them out of the window, then they vanish.
The bar is closed so can't even get a drink. After the first hour we realise something is amiss and explore, to discover the other 20 guests and newlyweds having wedding breakfast in another room whilst we all sat around like idiots.

DH and I went to McDonalds and had a wander around the local retail park. When we returned they eventually opened a buffet at about 7pm. People were starving and some had remained sat in the little closed bar area all day.

With the benefit of age and wisdom if it happened now I'd probably have gone with 'fuck that' and gone home.

Oh I forgot another. Wedding at a restaurant. Set menu. No vegan options. I was vegan.

DH’s cousins wedding was ‘afternoon tea’ which had the potential to be lovely but tables of 8 with four stands on each. Each stand contained 4 x finger sandwiches (egg, cream cheese and cucumber, savoury cheese and tuna) plus 2 mini sausage rolls / two mini scones, jam and cream / four canapé size cakes on top.
One cousin announced her DH only liked the sausage rolls so took them all onto one plate for him. I had one cream cheese sandwich, a mini scone and a fucking tiny chocolate thing. This was 4.30pm after a 1pm wedding. By the time evening guests arrived at 7.30pm we realised the tables were re-shuffled and there were not enough seats for each person so DH and I phoned my dad for a lift home because the guest bus was booked for midnight and we were starving. Mil informed us the next day we missed the evening buffet of bacon rolls. Plates with rolls cut in half sat on tables. Roughly 1/2 to 3/4 a roll per person!

Not me but my mum - buffet meal and the caterers were informed my mum would need something gluten free. She was given a plate of bread rolls without butter on. They weren't even gluten free bread rolls. Clearly the caterer had mixed up gluten free with dairy free but even so that was a pretty terrible offering even if it was for a dairy free person.

My friend served sushi. No wedding breakfast, just a buffet of sushi. It came out at room temperature, there wasn't enough for the amount of guests. It was awful. Left early because we were starving.

I was diagnosed with celiac disease a couple of months ago.

From reading all these stories, If i’m ever invited to a wedding again, I’ll take my own gluten free lunch box that I can sneak off and snack on incase i’m presented with lettuce leaves and melon

“Afternoon tea” with no hot pastries or anything substantial, basically a few measly sandwiches scrimping on filings and a couple of Kipling cakes. I’ve had better meals from a service station honestly.

DH still moans about it cost us 2 nights in a hotel (£400) plus wedding gift (£100 + bottle of champagne)

I liked the sound of an afternoon tea for my wedding but reading this I'm glad I didn't choose it!

I've gone for canapés, three course meal and an evening hot rolls/baguettes with chips. As well as a fully stocked sweetie/cookie table and a Black Forest wedding cake. Anyone needing veggie etc will have the same food but adjusted so for instance we're having a beef pie for main, which will have a rich mushroom filling instead.

Reading this thread has made me nervous!!

It was supposed to be a 'camp fire cook-out' type affair at a well-known safari park venue. The food was utterly appalling; cheap, tasteless, rubbery meat that had been overcooked and then some. It was also served almost four hours after arriving at the venue, by which time many of the male guests (and quite a few of their partners) were absolutely hammered and had gone through the bar tab - twice - much to the despair of the bride's father who was paying the bar bill.

The evening food was a singular small bread roll 'filled' with a minuscule portion of pulled pork or a solitary slice of bacon. I'm not sure there was a veggie option.

Whatever the bride and groom had paid for the catering, were it me, I'd have been back at the venue the following Monday morning asking for quite a large refund.

@BillyJoe111

I was diagnosed with celiac disease a couple of months ago.

From reading all these stories, If i’m ever invited to a wedding again, I’ll take my own gluten free lunch box that I can sneak off and snack on incase i’m presented with lettuce leaves and melon

Absolutely do that! I'm going to bring snacks with me to the next wedding I go to - even though I know the bride is emphatically NOT the type to skimp on decent food, I would bet my left tit that the catering company will have some sort of cold, tasteless, generic butternut squash slop for all the alternative diets (vegan, veggie, coeliac, dairy intolerant, halal, kosher etc.)

Wedding i went to few weeks ago actually.

1pm start, no canapes for reception drinks, wedding breakfast was served around 7pm (speeches etc all done before)

It wasn’t food per person, more a serve yourself type. Starter was ok as 2 guests arrived late so we had enough between 4 of us on the table (long table) for the main it was lamb, however the servers didn’t place them
Properly and as we were sat at the end of the table we didn’t get the lamb dish serving the people in the middle had 2 of the servings, so by the time we realised, there was about 4 small pieces of lamb that had to be shared between 6 people essentially and one piece was just fat mainly. The sides were all cold as well so couldn’t even enjoy that.

There was nothing wrong with the actual food but we went to my cousin’s wedding in a marquee and they ran out of food after literally 8 guests (out of about 100) and had nothing out to bring. The people in front had only taken a normal amount genuinely. To demonstrate there were two cereal bowls half filled with coleslaw along with the other stuff, I kept thinking someone will come along to fill them up and no one did.

My uncle had paid proper money for it too (it wasn’t a tight or scrimping thing) he kicked off with them and said you’re making us look bad and they went to Asda and bought more bread and food!! It was dire.

One at a very fancy hotel:waiting around for 3 hours for bridal party photos then cold food with a weird cheesecake. The evening do was crammed into a small sweaty room with burgers. Not that bad food wise but oh so boring.
Another with main course cold fat with a tiny bit of meat attached... I couldn't eat it- makes me boak to think of it. There was a group of kids on my table eating sausages which looked lovely! But they were left on the plates so maybe not
I hate all the waiting around at weddings and rubbish food makes it worse.
But the best one was the evening do with no food at all 😮 but glad there was a McD on the way back!!!!
We dodged the next wedding we were invited to

See, I got annoyed by havingy main at my own wedding called the "vegetarian option" by the staff.

I didn't pick it because it was vegetarian. I picked it because it was a bloody delicious brie and cranberry wellington. I chose the menu, I knew it was nicer than the lamb or salmon!

Oh and buffets- the people that pile their plates high and leave most of it!!!!
Drives me nuts

A wedding at a 'fancy' hotel. The top table ate ok but everyone else had freezing and tiny portions.

It was a very sober wedding (not just because the bar involved selling a kidney for a drink) and everyone went home as soon as they decently could. We went home via the 24hr Tesco and went nuts in the snack food aise if I remember right.

@ILikeBrie

Halal only applies to meat items so I don’t think they served vegan food to ensure it was halal. It was to cater to all dietary requirements.

It’s normal to have bones in the meat in a curry. Obviously the curries you probably eat aren’t authentic so you wouldn’t know.

The drink youre describing is lassi. Surely you’d have used your common sense and wondered why a sauce would be served in a jug?

You sound very ignorant and clearly have no respect for the person who got married or you’d have embraced their culture on their day.

It was an Indian wedding, ofcourse they were gonna serve Indian food.

This thread does remind me that although I've not been to a wedding for a long while, I always used to bring snacks with me as not knowing what food would be served in what quantity and by when makes me nervous. Couple that with copious alcohol and a few mini bags of cashews come in helpful.

We had roast beef at our wedding but it was sirloin and I know it was nice because I would have never heard the end of it from dh if it hadn’t been.

We had 3 veggies at our wedding who all had the beef when we offered them to have any veggie option they wanted. I would’ve been happy for them to have curry or Chinese or Thai or anything. So they had duck for starters then beef.

We had salvers of bacon and sausage with baps for the evening do and a veggie option of toast pointed peppers with soft goats cheese. A non veggie guest took them all home.

@BillyJoe111

I was diagnosed with celiac disease a couple of months ago.

From reading all these stories, If i’m ever invited to a wedding again, I’ll take my own gluten free lunch box that I can sneak off and snack on incase i’m presented with lettuce leaves and melon

Don't be glum, you'll almost certainly also get plain, dry chicken breast with boiled potato. And fruit salad for dessert! To be fair, things have improved markedly in the last few years, at least here in Ireland anyway where we have very high rates of coeliac disease. I got a sauce on my meat at the last wedding I was at! Luxury!

My cousin married a girl whose family all came from Zimbabwe. They'd had the legal "English" ceremony with a dozen people in the winter, and then her family wanted to host a big Zimbabwean-style bash in the summer holidays!
After the ceremony we all had to drive to a leisure centre, and then had to wait outside for at least 2 hours on a field out the back. It was boiling hot, and all they had out were about 6 bottles of Innocent smoothie - to be shared between about 100 people... Then a BBQ was started up, but all that was being served was some unknown, tough as old boot, meat.

Eventually, 100 sweaty, dehydrated, sunburnt Brits were ushered into a hall. Listened to ENDLESS rambling unprepared speeches from such people as "a representative of the brides grandfather" and "her mothers auntie".

Then we got a buffet. All "traditional Zimbabwean" fare. All of it was either burnt boot leather meat and unidentified vegetables - all of which was very spicy.

The only thing most of us bemused Brits managed to stomach was some cold potatoes.

So that's all we had in reward for our 2 hour drive there. A few gulps of smoothie, one bite of bbq'd boot leather, and a few cold potatoes.

Then there was the 2 hour drive home. I'd gone separately from my mum, and honestly, I've never seen her grumpier or more cross, than when we finally arrived home about 10:30pm.

@Wineat5isfine

I got married 16 years ago. If I have any advice for anyone planning their wedding - don’t scrimp on the food! Your day will always be remembered by the quality / quantity of food served.

We had canapés just after the ceremony. A 4 course served wedding breakfast.

A hot picky nibbly buffet for when the evening guests arrived and bacon rolls / mushroom & egg rolls served at midnight.

Just keep the food coming and everyone will be happy!

Now that is how to host! 👍

@BillyJoe111 you get used to having snack bars permanently in your bag tbh. In fact my colleagues know this and have been known to beg for a protein bar when food at conferences has been short/terrible. I've also met some lovely people when skulking around waiting for the gluten free food to appear.
But weddings, where you can't usually nip out to get something else, and which are often long hours need serious preparation