to have a fancy restaurant meal kit as a wedding meal?

[as141]

Context: It's my sisters wedding next month. She planned for a very small covid-friendly wedding (11 people in total, immediate family basically) and has booked a lovely secluded cottage for us all to stay for a weekend. Plan is for an all day BBQ one day. The wedding day itself has plans for canapes/drinks but struggling to think of an evening meal.

I thought maybe we could get a fine dining meal kit, I didn't actually get any at the time but they were all the rage in lockdown 1.0 - does anyone have any recommendations? (I remember some being ~£100/person so I thought it could be special enough)

The only thing that would put me off is knowing if you'd have everything you'd need, equipment wise. Holiday cottages tend not to have the best equipped kitchens.

Is there a type of food which is special to them as a couple?

It doesn't need to be 'posh' or a certain 'type' of meal to be suitable for a wedding meal (though that may be what some people would want), one of the most fun and memorable receptions I've been to (was in a seaside town where the bride and groom had grown up) the local fish and chip shop delivered and then for desert they got an ice cream man to arrive outside the reception hall

How secluded is the cottage? If its also remote, you might struggle to find somewhere that delivers there! Who would prepare the meal for 11 people? Does your sister want to do this idea. I'd just contact a local restaurant/pub to have a complete meal delivered.

I’ve used local restaurants and Cookaway. For “heat and serve” I would love to have an excuse to try Tommy Banks’s food. www.tommybanks.co.uk/product/made-in-oldstead-food-box-signature-menu/

But there’s loads of other options. Nico looks good. Just be wary of Banquist and Cote at Home, in my experience. Not that they’re terrible - just not as good as they should be for the price, imho.

We received a gift of a Gaucho meal kit for two as a gift during lockdown which was lovely but maybe a bit of a faff to cook for 11.

How about outside caters. We had this once when we stayed in lovely large self catered accommodation/mini castle (about 20 odd of us) and it worked really well. The accommodation was extremely well equipped kitchen wise with a beautiful large dining table. We were all asked to vacate the kitchen area for a certain time. The outside caterers laid the beautiful dining table (had suggested a time for us all to come down for pre-dinner drinks organised by the hosts) and the meal was served by the caterers at X time, they didn’t intrude, cleared up, tidied the kitchen quietly and left us to it.

Marcus Wareing or Jason Atherton. We've done both and they're very easy to cook as long as you've got an oven dish and a couple of pans, but definitely feel special - photo attached of our Jason Atherton one.

My only hesitation would be the logistics of cooking it for 11 people, but I don't suppose that's any different to another meal - I just don't normally cook for that many!

I'd definitely book caterers or delivery, but I do have a hankering to try Stein in a Box as I love fish.

@as141

Context: It's my sisters wedding next month. She planned for a very small covid-friendly wedding (11 people in total, immediate family basically) and has booked a lovely secluded cottage for us all to stay for a weekend. Plan is for an all day BBQ one day. The wedding day itself has plans for canapes/drinks but struggling to think of an evening meal.

I thought maybe we could get a fine dining meal kit, I didn't actually get any at the time but they were all the rage in lockdown 1.0 - does anyone have any recommendations? (I remember some being ~£100/person so I thought it could be special enough)

The price isn’t what makes a meal special. Preparing something the bride and groom will love (as well as the guests) makes it special. That could be pizzas or afternoon tea or whatever.

The really good/popular ones - like the Made in Olstead box - are sold out really quickly and I think you'd struggle to get a hold of 11 at a time. Also the way they come packaged (usually based around 2 people) would make it quite stressy to reheat. You're going to get 5 bits of meat to heat up etc - which I think will be really tricky in a badly equipped cottage.

I think you'd be much better looking at the radius of the cottage and seeing if you can get some private caterers. Or just scale down - as pp say, there's ways to make things special without making them fancy. What's their favourite foods and take it from there...