Wedding catering was a bit shit

[Brieonabagel]

My best friends wedding, I was a bridesmaid. The happy couple work hard but aren't well off so had a strict budget.
The whole event was booked at a hotel. So the ceremony was there and then the reception, then guests booked rooms (paid for by themselves) and stayed the night.

The budget was tight so, when ordering the food, the groom asked what their options were.
They were told that they don't 'do' buffets. They only do a sit down meal.
The options for this began at £14 per head. As such they could only afford the cheapest menu.

The hotel has a strict policy on not bringing in your own food and drink, which is fine.

We were served a (small) spoonful of cottage pie each (one large catering tray for 50 guests) 2 pieces of broccoli each and some carrots.
Dessert was a scone with clotted cream and jam.

Aibu to think that's pretty meagre considering it was £14 per head?

I was not full from that meal and it certainly didn't serve to soak up the alcohol later on!
Also, they didn't sell bar snacks?! Odd, with their no bringing in food from outside rule I thought.

The groom was fuming as the meal had been described in fancy detail and he thought he'd get something decent for £14 a head. The bride and groom hadn't been able to eat all day due to nerves so that was their only food for all day and night.

Is £14 per head reasonable for that meal?

#14pp sounds cheap for a wedding meal, so I wouldn't have been expecting too much for that. Pity they were disappointed though. Do you have photos of the food?

That is a bit weak. I mean they are charging £3k for the venue, so most of that is pure profit. They haven't really made the couple feel very special have they?

@lilyheather1

Having said that, if the groom was promised individual pies and you all just got a bit of a tray bake, I'd say there's definitely room there for a complaint.

Yes, it was described completely differently to what they got.
Whether £14 per head is cheap isn't really the point.
If it would cost more to deliver what they promised then they should have charged more.

Outrageous. For 2 courses I suppose that is fairly cheap but there’s no need for it be shitty quality. We’re in the SW. I work for an excellent caterer that is towards the high end of the market round here (lots of very wealthy clients use us) and we would charge about £10/12 per head for a main of really really good quality (local organic meat etc) puds probably £7/8 so not vastly different (I know it adds up when your x100). Really feel for them, they should complain if only to make it known that that’s not acceptable.

£14 per head should have rung alarm bells, sorry.

I had to search the ends of the earth for a 3 course catered meal for £25ph - my friend was further north and got the kind of thing your friend expected for £20ph.

A bargain basement price results in bargain basement service. Yes it was crap, and you'd expect better from a pub, but in a pub, they very rarely have to serve 50+ people near-simultaneously, do they?

@ladyvimes

Why did they choose that venue? For £14 a head you could get a decent buffet. Booking a hotel that charges £175 a night doesn’t really sound like a budget option!
It’s very cheap for a sit down meal though. We paid £42 a head for our sit down meal and thought that was a bargain!

I think the wedding package was cheap at £3k and that's why they chose that venue. They got their room for 2 nights in with the price too, the night before for the bride and her mother and then the wedding night itself.
They were impressed with that and their guests didn't have to stay over if they didn't want to pay £175 for a room.

The groom originally suggested a buffet but the hotel manager said they don't do buffets. Their menu started at £14 per head and as they needed to keep the cost down they went for that option.

They didn't get what they were led to believe they would get though.
Whether or not that's because £14 is cheap isn't really the bride and grooms fault. If the hotel needs to charge more to deliver what they promise then they should charge more.

Bold fail, sorry.

I personally would forget about this.

Poor them, it can be a rip-off but we got a hog roast, bread, variety of salads and a selection of ice creams for 15.5/ head and it was a lot of food at a specific wedding venue so it is doable ( although the venue hire was more but we had 100 guests).

@OwlinaTree
Exactly! It was their big day

We were a bit disappointed with ours - went to the tasting and the food was amazing. On the wedding day it was all presented differently and nowhere near as much per person. Still tasted good, but expect the guests were a bit peckish! But as long as they had a lovely day overall I would try not to think too much about it. It seems important now but will all get hazy and forgotten in time.

I've never been to a wedding and had good food.

It's all part of the experience of general overall torture, I'd assumed.......

On the one hand £14 per head is very very cheap for a wedding. On the other hand, if he didn’t get what he was told he’d get then of course he has grounds for complaint.

I agree that it was very cheap but they probably should have been clearer about what the £14 was actually getting the couple, maybe that could be fed back (ha!) to the venue so they can avoid other couples being disappointed.

Regardless of whether people think £14 a head is cheap or not, if the food wasnt as described then the bride and groom have grounds to complain.

£14 is very cheap for a hotel wedding meal. You get what you pay for unfortunately.

Hotels are always a rip off for weddings.

£14 is really very cheap. I would not expect anything decent at a hotel for that price.

If I'm honest I probably wouldn't have eaten cottage pie from a catering tray either. You just know the meat will be cheap and nasty.

I'd have expected more in terms of portion size but £14 per head is ridiculously cheap so I wouldn't be expecting much for that. You can barely get 2 course bar meal for that nowadays. You can't expect table service when paying so little as the cost of the servers wages for the event would have to be factored in to the food prices.

We personally chose a venue that didn't have a venue hire cost. Obviously the food cost more but was much a much nicer sit down three course meal with coffees afterwards and drinks included for £50/head which seems fairly average. We had 100 guests so it came to £5000 for catering but looking at what your friend paid that's only £1000 more and we had an extra 50 guests and a LOT more food. We were also able to bring in our own food and provided a sweet buffet and ice cream tricycle throughout the day. We opted for a cheese and biscuit selection instead of a traditional finger buffet in the evening.

I would say your friends were ripped off but they also chose poorly when it came to picking a venue.

Depends where in the country you are, but £14 ph for a sit down meal would be ringing alarm bells for me.

People are missing the point about what they could cook with a similar budget- for a wedding venue, this includes everything- food, room hire, staff, flatware, glasses, table linens etc at a volume for every single guest to be served at the exact same time. It's not the same as paying for an individual meal at a restaurant. There is also the expectation that as a wedding, there is an extra element of attention to detail required from event staff as it's such a one off special occasion.

There are other ways to provide catering on a budget- when I got married in 2016, we rented and decorated our church hall and I arranged for a buffet, for funnily enough £14 ph. It was great food, everyone who wanted seconds got some and it meant there was no messing about between courses.

I don’t think you can expect too much for £14 per head as that’s a very low price for formal style wedding catering BUT the way it was served sounds dreadful. The venue concerned should feel embarrassed that they give a school dinner service for a wedding, especially if they led the groom to believe otherwise. He should certainly speak to them about their misrepresentation.

I'd put in a complaint. It is clear that was he was 'sold' as a dish was not what was served.

Does not sound like good value. This is buffet quoted at £10 per head for 65 people at party I had two weeks ago. Food was ample and delicious. The word wedding was never mentioned

Was the groom told it would be individual servings though? I think I’ve missed that bit. Or that it would be on these cake tier things?

It sounds more like a lack of clarity and some assumptions being made to me

If it's any consolation to your friends - very rarely is a wedding meal remembered as anything more than something to line people's stomachs with before the party starts afterwards.

I also don't know why so many people are at the fact they served cottage pie- I would have loved that as a quirky alternative to the standard meat-and-two-veg that you get at every other wedding!