Evening wedding reception food - Dominos!?

[Discolady123]

I’m having an evening only wedding reception in a few months and we are really struggling with the catering side of things. We will be having a ceremony around 3/4pm for 1 hour, then onto photos at the church grounds, and people will go straight to the venue from there. We aren’t doing a sit down meal as we want a more relaxed vibe.

We are seriously thinking about ordering a large quantity of dominos pizzas to the venue and having a pizza buffet. We LOVE pizza as a couple and feel like it’s a bit different to the standard wedding hot buffet. (the venue doesn’t really have outside access so a pizza truck wouldn’t work, hence a takeaway option).

We were thinking of having sides at the start of the buffet table (pasta, salad, coleslaw, crisps, cocktail sausages & breadsticks) & then the rest would be pizza.

What is your thoughts on this? Would you be mortified if you turned up to a wedding reception and had pizza? Or would you prefer a standard finger buffet?

Also how many people would you say could share a large dominos pizza? This will help up with quantities etc.

My DH has meeting days at work where the food supplied is from Dominoes.
It appeals to a handful of staff (mainly the young ones) but many absolutely hate the lukewarm, soggy pizza on offer.
They are cooked in batches so by the time the large number of pizzas are done & they are all ready for delivery, many are cold and wet.
I’d hate it.

We did this for a party of 150 people, did lovely salads, butternut squash, pasta, rice, coleslaw, Greek feta, probably 3 bowls of 9 different salads. Probably spent £150 on pizza as its buy one get one, and it was the kind of party where people were really pleased with the non beige food and you had 2-3 slices of a large pizza and half a plate of salads, kids like it, adults like it and domino's do vegan and gluten free. It was warm when we ate. It was a very relaxed event but if that's the vibe you want to go for, then do it. The salads did take up a significant amount of work tho, that was most of the day before

The practicalities of this make in infeasible. If you really want to do it, go talk to the places that you are thinking of and find out what the capacity of their ovens are, how willing they are to commit all of their oven capacity over to you for however long on the day in question and how they would deliver to you (no scooter is going to hold 65 pizzas on the back in one go!).

Realistically, if there are no catering facilities at the venue and you have no outdoor space for food trucks or a hog roast, you need to be thinking about good cold food you can serve. Hot food will be nigh on impossible to get delivered and serve to 100+ guests before it goes cold.

@Abaababa

I would be horrified to go to a wedding that offered Dominos (not a single ingredient in their pizza can I have), but more because it’s tacky. I would probably make an early exit.

Please don’t be the person who is known for feeding her wedding guests Domino’s.

If you’re budget can’t cover food properly, consider just having nibbles and drinks and being very clear with guests it is a drinks reception only.

Best of luck!

I agree with you too, so I also wouldn't be missed.

A lovely drinks reception is far better than half a luke warm pizza and can be done beautifully for the same price

I think it sounds great, I’d be happy to come!

Due to the nature of my work (incident response) we sometimes have to drop into 24 hour working at short notice, in which case we get food delivered to work / typically 20 pizzas! It’s really difficult to cook and deliver lots of pizzas warm at once. I imagine that a takeaway like Domino’s will struggle to cater for a wedding, alongside their usual customers. An independent restaurant might fare better, depending on the size of their kitchen and pizza oven.

A friend of mine had a fish and chip supper for their wedding buffet.
Guests actually queued at the chip shop to collect them! We ate them off our knee in the church hall. It was a casual affair.

@pussycatunpickingcrossesagain I don’t eat cheese, or any dairy, you just pick the cheese free pizza.

Love pizza, hate this idea though.. it’d be a logistical nightmare. I don’t even get pizza delivered at home, despite living within a five minute drive of two great places, because it’s never really that warm once it gets here. Especially the thinner stonebaked ones. I don’t think half a pizza is enough either. Most restaurants won’t be experienced with event catering, and are there staff at the venue who could serve, keep on top of all the boxes and attempt to keep stuff warm? Nice idea in theory but I’d be too stressed on the day in case something went wrong with timings or quantities. Keeping everyone fed is like wedding 101, too much potential for drama here.

I’d prefer to not be invited, to be honest.
It’s a wedding, not a sleepover for a group of 14 year olds.

Plus Dominos is disgusting, and it’ll be cold and congealed and a pool of grease before most people can grab a slice.

Ugh.

Plus, what would the logistic be? Who’s going to be the person standing around keeping an eye out for the delivery guy?

God if only all weddings served dominoes, life would be good!

I definitely agree that if you go for a pizza element it needs to be from somewhere other than Dominoes!

As a guest, it wouldn’t bother me but I like dominos. I’m fine with casual food - we had bacon butties.

From a close family member/bridesmaid or the bride point of view, it’s an awful idea. It needs a lot of management. You’ll need a couple of people to carry boxes in, sort them into the different pizzas so you know what you’re replenishing and when. The general approach to serving dominos is to rip the top off the box, so you’ll need people to rip the tops of the boxes but keep which pizza it is and set them all out. Whoever is setting the pizzas out risks getting grease on their clothes. You’ll need someone to replenish the pizzas as they run out, remove the old cardboard boxes. So it’s either you and your partner managing this and it’s not enjoyable for you or you’re relying on someone else managing it and it’s not fun for them. I’d also say with a buffet for 110 people, the people at the end of the queue will also be having cold pizza and sides, so you either use a catering company so everyone has hot food or you do a cold food option.

@Abcdefu

Love pizza,but no domino's. Would use a local place with sour dough base / wood fire oven

That would be such a disappointment for me. Love pizza. Love chain and local style pizzas equally.

But sourdough base - def bit!

I really don't like sourdough, be it bread or pizza base. I really don't understand its popularity! I can't wait for the sourdough fad to pass.

One of the best wedding evening food offerings I ever experienced was chip butties, sausage butties and bacon butties. Buffet food can be hit and miss, there's only so many mini sausage rolls you can eat. I don't think what you're suggesting is a bad idea although I would think there's better value out there. Are there any local mobile pizza enterprises near you? There's one in our area that announces on Facebook which pub car park they'll be operating in each weekend and they always do a roaring trade (pun intended!).

Why not get two catering trucks, one pizza one something else, park them outside and bring the food in. That way there is some choice as well as being able to serve people quicker.

I don't object to the idea of pizza but I think the logistics of using a takeaway will be a nightmare.

Also would your venue be ok with it?

I’d say it’s fine as long as you check what dietary requirements your guests may have.

Would you have vegan options for anyone who doesn’t eat meat/lactose intolerant?

Omg I would love Dominos! I think my parents generation wouldn't but it's your wedding so I'd do it how you want to!

My friend has a pizza truck at her wedding, was the best food I’ve ever had at a wedding

@Abaababa

I would be horrified to go to a wedding that offered Dominos (not a single ingredient in their pizza can I have), but more because it’s tacky. I would probably make an early exit.

Please don’t be the person who is known for feeding her wedding guests Domino’s.

If you’re budget can’t cover food properly, consider just having nibbles and drinks and being very clear with guests it is a drinks reception only.

Best of luck!

Same.

Mortified? Why would people be embarrassed if you served them dominos?
I wouldn’t like it though - wouldn’t want to risk getting nice clothes greasyx

@Simonjt

I don’t know why people think the pizza will be cold, my employer has a party twice a year that Papa Johns caters, there are around 140 of us, the pizza is delivered in a van, once in the venue each flavour ‘stack’ is put on the hotplate, the servers change the pizza for a fresh one when it runs out. Always hot, never congealed.

Having Papa John's do the catering and bring equipment with them is quite different to just ordering loads of pizza, which it sounds like OP was asking about.

I love pizza. However you really have to consider people who don't or can't eat it for one reason or either.
Whilst you're going to have the buffet, the people eating pizza will probably also eat that, so is there going to be enough to ensure the people who aren't eating pizza have enough to keep them satisfied?

They didn’t bring any equipment, they delivered the pizzas, work then hired a handful of servers who used hired hotplates to serve us.

My sister in law was going to do this and have a burger van, it sounded amazing! She went with a catering company in the end and the food was a disaster... I don't mean that lightly either! Check about intolerances though, dominos do some nice vegan pizza