Pre-wedding email. Bit weird?

[bookworm8500]

Invited to a colleague's wedding evening do and had an email come through to all guests (unless it has just come to me 🤣). Maybe I've just hit the nail on the head 🤣

It states, amongst loads of other instructions, that,

'A small buffet will be provided. This is for all guests to enjoy, so please be considerate with your portion sizes'.

I've never seen anything like that before! AIBU to find that very weird to be on a pre-wedding email?!

I am not agreeing to disagree. you said that You simply cannot undercater as a host. but some hosts do undecater.

A good host does not undercater.

Out of interest, what do you dislike about buffets? They don't have to be all sandwiches/vol-au-vents/sausage rolls etc, we had chilli and a pasta dish at ours as well as the cold food (this is in a hotel with a good restaurant, the hot dishes were amazing), and chips, which went down really well with the kids. 😄Personally when I go to other people's weddings, I much prefer a nicely done buffet that lets people grab a plateful then circulate, to a stuffy formal sit-down meal where you have to sit where you're told and make small talk with strangers.

Yes maybe I wasn’t clear.

By saying you ‘you simply can’t’ is a turn of phrase. Obviously many hosts do. I meant you shouldn’t.

Nothing wrong with a buffet. I guess it’s just hard to judge amounts? So to ensure you have enough. And people getting impatient if they’re last in the queue? I find it difficult to stand and talk and eat at the same time!

I didn’t seat anyone next to strangers - at our wedding. We put friends together and our meal wasn’t stuffy at all. It was from the local deli- all quite informal.

Maybe they know they've invited a greedy relative

I don't think it's that bad. At my nieces christening a couple of people managed to eat about half the buffet. At my DS' christening a couple of people ate entire plates of some foods so there was no choice for anyone else.

Its a shame that the greedy people can't he held back.

I really like (good) buffets. However if you have a proper food allergy, they are a total nightmare for cross contamination.

Nobody wants to be frugal on a day of excess. Food and booze should flow!

I had a light buffet at my wedding in the evening. I did cater for everyone but it wasn't a cheese, meats and baguettes affair. I don't think we had sandwiches either. More picky bits! I didn't get any because people were greedy and took food they didn't eat...

Should have done this at my own wedding. The venue opened the buffet whilst my husband and I were dancing and by the time we went to it there wasn’t much left!!

That's awful, celticprincess. I would have thought the buffet would be replenished regularly, don't the staff keep an eye on it?

It is a weird email to send, but I can kind of see where they're coming from!

We have been to many weddings/parties where some greedy twats have rushed to the buffet and piled their plates with enough food for 4 people, and it's left other people short.

We even went to a day reception with a hot buffet, where they called the tables up in order. The last table was left with the dregs.

So yeah, the majority are horrified by the rudeness of this email, thank feck, would be terrible to think the standards for hosting a wedding had dropped so low that normal people would think this was ok.

It's absolutely bizarre, and of course it won't stop anyone who's greedy, they won't care - but it's made every other guest feel like shite.

If you can't afford to feed people well with no fear of food shortages you definitely cannot afford to invite them, so don't.

I'd reconsider going. Nothing to do with the food, as such, cos I wouldn't eat much off of any buffet due to food intolerances - but the Scrooge-like, parsimonious, scolding goes to character - yuck. Who the fuck wants to spend time and money celebrating with miserable, skinflint bastards like that?!

One issue is that caterers have different ideas about how much food per person.
Also, if you have guests with dietary requirements like gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian, allergen-free etc, they will cater for that number.
There are countless threads on MN about how the first to get to the buffet took the food that was meant for only one or a few of the guests.

If you can only eat gluten-free food and someone else has taken it, then even if on the whole the food is plentiful, you'll be left hungry.

Surely the venue where these weddings are held need to run the buffets better if guests are going hungry. So hold some food back. Have some staff serving specific portions. Instruct staff that the wedding couple may be eating last and hold food back for them.

It shouldn’t really be run as a massive free for all.

They've under catered and won't be enough food for everyone, so make sure you eat before hand.

@Delatron , but guests shouldn't be treating it as a massive free-for-all. Supersized portions have made people expect more, and a couple getting married probably don't have the budget for catering for greedy guests.

No they shouldn’t obviously. But clearly some are. Therefore the solutions are: don’t have a buffet, instruct the venue to not lay it all out at once, cater sufficiently with plenty of food, or - what the OP has seen - send out a rude email.

I’d go for the other options over the rude email.

With the total cost of weddings often being ££ I don’t think a few people having seconds is going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. People need to allocate enough money to the food and cut back elsewhere or don’t invite quite as many people. The email is not good manners.

I don't think it is. It could have been worded better, but if I read it, I'd think, 'There will be a small buffet, but not a full-on spread. Don't turn up starving'.
I wouldn't go there hungry.

It's the wedding reception that matters foodwise IMO. If I've set off early and the food is mid-afternoon after a service and photos then I'd be ravenous.

People who care about the couple, perhaps, and rank that above the food arrangements? Radical concept, I know, but hey ho. 🤷‍♀️

Absolutely. I think unfortunately some people mentally prefix 'buffet' with 'all-you-can-eat' and don't stop to think about other people before loading their plates till they're groaning. That's why I don't think the email is out of order.

I agree.

We’ve been to a few weddings this year and the evening food has been a selection of hot rolls brought to each table, a fish and chip van, a pizza van and a van providing a range of Mexican food. We’ve only been to one with a traditional buffet and that had hot options of chicken or veg curry and beef or veg lasagne as well as the normal sandwiches, sausage rolls etc.

One of our DC got married this year and we had a BBQ for the evening buffet, we were very aware some people had been working that day and wouldn’t have had time to eat, the least we could do was having food available for them after making the effort to come.

I think you may be right. The last buffet I went to was served, not help yourself.

See a simple solution- rather than a rude email (still think they are under catering though).

I feel we need to know about the multiple emails of instructions which have been deemed necessary for an evening invite to a wedding!