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?

The dessert was supposed to br 'simple, elegant and traditional afternoon tea style'

If this is what they said and didn’t mention service on the table on those tier things then I think they’ve just been a bit vague rather than misleading, as what they’ve said doesn’t really mean anything.

What did they say about individual pies?

I don’t know what they were expecting for £14 per head.
The cheapest we saw was £25 per head and that was 6 years ago.

I think wedding food (at least when it's sold as wedding food) is outrageously overpriced. My friend paid £50 a head and got a meal that was about equivalent to what I'd buy in my work canteen for £12. (It was three courses: tomato soup that tasted like tinned with a piece of sliced bread and butter. Dry chicken dish with cubed potatoes and meagre amount of sauce and very underwhelming chocolate mousse). Total rip off.

If it helps, my friends had a very expensive wedding with outside caterers and there was nowhere near enough food. We were all absolutely starving and stuck in the middle of nowhere so no chance of a late night pizza or kebab on the way home.
I think the caterer was used to doing small parties, with lovely canapés, etc, but had no idea how to scale up for 100 people.
So, generally you get what you pay for, but not always!

It doesn't sound like they said individual pies... That seems like a misunderstanding.

Scones and clotted cream are simple and traditional. And may be rather elegant...

But the taste and adequate quantities seem like the issue to me personally.

Have to say, I've been lucky and at the five weddings I've been to in the last year the food has been fabulous at all of them, and all very different. One was a buffet and was great, the rest sit down meals.

£14 really is nothing though. If I was on a low budget, I wouldn't have chosen a hotel that didn't do a buffet, personally. As for cottage pie, nowt wrong when done well at all. I've been to two weddings just before or just after Christmas and one did sausage and mash. Was bloody brilliant (naice sausages, rather than Wall's). Doesn't need to be fancy

£14 per head for a small spoonful of cottage pie isn’t a bargain. It’s a cheap dish especially when done in bulk.

Does he have anything in writing - even photos from their brochure - indicating it would be individual cottage pies? And also how the scones would be served? If he has he could complain in writing to the general manager saying what was served was not as advertised.

It sounds pretty rubbish. Even if it was the cheapest choice it should have been served as described.

It sounds crap, but $14 is an absolute bargain basement price, so this is a case of you get what you pay for. It sounds like the groom simply expected it would be nicer than it was, but the price was fair warning I think.

Honestly this is a good example of why it’s a good idea to eschew typical ‘wedding’ packages and venues if you’re on a tight budget. £700 for 50 people would have gone very far if they’d just hired a hall and done a buffet, but it’s a minuscule budget for a catered sit down reception dinner at a hotel.

It felt like the bride and groom were looked down on for choosing the cheapest menu option.
In my opinion, it's their wedding day, lowest catering price or not, make it fit for a wedding!

Yeah, well, they DID choose the cheapest food option!

£14 a head is a tiny budget for a wedding meal. It does sound a bit crappy, guests would have been hungry and that doesn't make for a good wedding.

Did they not try the food first? You generally can do a tasting session where you check out the menu.

@CiderwithBuda

I'm pretty sure he has it in writing.
He said things like 'that's not how it was described on the menu' etc so I do think they've either cleverly worded it to sound better than it is or they've actually promised certain stuff that they haven't delivered.

They are away on honeymoon at the moment but I expect he will complain when they get back.

@serbska

I don't know if they did a tasting first.

BUT I don't think they deserve to be looked down on for choosing the cheapest option. It was an option on their wedding menu so they should have been happy to deliver what's promised. If they're not happy to, they shouldn't have it as an option!

I doubt they were ‘looked down on’ unless there was anything in the attitude of the staff that suggested that? More just that their cheapest option just isn’t very good.

Why didn't they just find a venue better suited to their budget?

Oh no, I don't meant they should be looked down on. But my overwhelming memory of that at would have been being hungry (or sneaking off to go get food).

I wish people would cut their cloth accordingly. Don't book stupid expensive hotels if you can't afford them!

The thing is fourteen quid includes staff to serve it up, set up the seating, clear after, the place settings etc, as well as staff to cook it.

If it was definitely described as individual pies then obviously he has room for complaint, but not otherwise I don't think. It sounds measly but they were never going to get much for that kind of money.

Lining up to get your meal like a school dinner hall sounds shit and a bit nasty of the hotel, knowing it was a wedding. There are plenty of ways they could have served exactly the same food (which sounds perfect to me) and made it a little bit special. That's what I'd be pissed off about.

I think it would be worth giving them some “feedback” to say they were disappointed the food was not presented as promised - include anything in writing. They couldn’t say a few of the guests were hungry afterwards and would have been happy to pay for additional snacks if they’d been made available. You never know, they might get some vouchers/ money back.

• they could say.

What's done is done. TBH for wedding prices, that sounds ok. Leave it alone now.

Sounds as if quantities were quite inadequate - I'd certainly have a moan at the stingy caterers.

Re not doing buffets, I do understand this. We originally wanted a buffet for dd's wedding, but the caterer said it would be quite a bit more expensive, because

a) many people take a lot more than they're going to eat and then leave much of it, so they have to provide more to start with, and

b) It's not easy to judge which dishes are going to be most popular, so again they have to provide quite a lot more than for plated meals, and

c) people who are late/last in the queue can get very disgruntled/pissed off if there's nothing left of what they'd have liked best.

Must say these things should hadn't occurred to us.
Plated meals mean they know exactly how much they will need of everything, inc. veggie meals etc. So no waste - or at least a lot less.

It’s all very well feeling sorry for the groom, but he’s hardly given his friends and family much consideration, has he? If your budget is tight, you don’t spend 3k on the venue whilst risking a crap meal for your guests.

At my friend’s wedding:

Ceremony 12pm
Make your own way over to the reception for 2.30pm.
One drink, no canapes or so much as a bowl of crisps.
Fancy ass venue.
Meal at 4.30. No starter. Sweets on tables. Wine on tables. Fish and chips served from van. Not huge portions tbh.
‘Cake as pudding’. Except not enough for everyone.
Evening chippy van - finally actualy substantial food.

And that cost her £30ph!

For mine:

Buffet dinner for anyone staying the night before.
Breakfast included in (cheap) accomodation cost both days.
Extra food added by us for lunches in apartment kitchens.
Free bar all weekend.
Canapes after ceremony.
3 course meal.
Evening buffet.

That is £40ph for food and £20ph for booze. About £4.5k total, £3k total for just the Saturday. Your friend could have chosen to do similar, and made his paltry food budget the venue budget instead.

The thing is with weddings is that if you want a decent spread at a hotel etc, you’ll be looking at forking out at the very least £40 ph.

If your budget doesn’t stretch to that (mine didn’t!) then you’ll either need to get creative and think outside the 3-course-meal-at-a-Hotel box and potentially do a lot of the work yourself.

I feel for your friends if the food and service that they got on the day wasn’t what they’d been promised, in which case they’re due an apology from the venue, but it does sound like they went for the cheapest package without thinking about the potential drawbacks.

He needs to look at the menu wording and at exactly what was agreed in writing to see if he wants to try a formal complaint. I guess if they don't respond well there's always the option of a review on TripAdvisor or wedding sites that discusses the shortcomings of those menu options.

£14 is cheap. If you want a cheap wedding, then you have to chop your cloth accordingly. They went cheap on the food. I recently went to a wedding in a village hall. They did their own flowers, didn't bother with cars, second hand wedding dress, disco in evening, an honestly bar for the drink. The food was afternoon tea from a caterer in the day. Evening was a paella. Again from caterer. There were 70 guests and it cost less than 5k.