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?!

Exactly

It's telling you to only expect a small amount not a bellyfull.

Unless you have form for grabbing a platter for your own consumption, i wouldn't take it personally. I worked at a company where there was someone who would do that.

See I disagree with this, there are absolutely people (at least at all the weddings & christenings I’ve been to) who will easily take 2 or 3 people’s worth of food. As I said further up these people will usually take 2 plates and fill one piled up with savoury and another piled up with sweet. Half of it is still sat on their plates at the end of the night, it is just greed.

There are definitely people who see a buffet as an “all you can eat” challenge.

You are being openly forewarned there’s not going to be a lot of food at the buffet. Strange to be so brazen about it via email and blame the guests prior to the wedding. I am older and woefully out of touch with weddings nowadays and very glad I don’t have to deal with all this new fuckery.

Never heard of this before, but better to be warned.

This, but also this is a b&g who don't have the courage not to invite certain people to their wedding.

What normally happens is the (usually) bride will be talking at work about her wedding for months and months. Invites come out and she doesn't want or have the budget to invite everyone at work who's been putting up with the wedding chat for months, so it's evening-only for them. Which everyone thinks is fine because they're not family or really friends, just work friends. But the budget is the budget and she doesn't really know what these work friends are like IRL, outside the office, and she certainly doesn't know what the groom's work friends are like and whether they're going to behave out in the world. So rather than not invite them all and feel bad for having gone on and on about it at work for months, they're hedging their bets by doing evening-only invites to something where you have to pay for your own drinks, bring a fit, and are being explicitly told that in return there won't be a second dinner, it'll be 4 canapes each max so eat before you come. I never accept evening-only invites. They're ridiculous.

@LittleRedRidingHoody
"I'd imagine it's to stop everyone who normally goes 'oh I won't eat all day, save space for tonight!' ~ they've probably provided a normal amount of food and now worried they'll run out!"
I went to a wedding (Day and Evening guest), but when buffet food was put out, in the evening, many of those who had been to the recption all tucked in first.
This meant many of those arriving in the evening had very little to eat.
This sounds a bit weird putting it down like that, but I presume the evening buffet food was put out a bit early, and some of the evening guests had not arrived.

They are skint or tight or both

Definitely a hint, there won't be much food so don't expect there to be.

Translation: we have massively under-catered and we have the gall to preemptively try to blame that on our guests

A 'small buffet' means there won't be enough food so be prepared for drunken shenanigans as people get tanked up on empty stomachs.

You could always reciprocate the rude UK A and B guest list tradition by ordering a Dominos delivery partway through and feasting on it in front of everyone.

They’ve under catered

It means eat your supper before you go - expect a small vol-au-vent with a peanut chaser for nibbles.

🤣

No, I've never seen this before but as others have said it's presumably because of the people who load their plates because it's 'free' (for them!).

Not the same thing but we occasionally go to 'all you can eat' places (wouldn't usually be my choice but tends to be for friends' birthdays etc). DH won't eat all day to 'make space', will pile his plate high with the most expensive stuff (seafood, steak, fancy pastries etc etc) and then ends up leaving half of it. It really pisses me off as I hate food waste anyway but particularly when it's meat! I can imagine him doing similar at a wedding buffet with no thought as to whether the other guests are going to be left hungry (he's not usually this selfish, honestly!)

Unusual and bit loaded wording.

I think it should have been something like "just to let you know, we're only providing a small selection of snacks in the evening".

Then they could give some options like places to eat nearby for anyone travelling any distance or number for the local pizza delivery 😂😂

Never seen it before. I guess it's how it is nowadays with people who can't really afford to host a wedding.

Tbh, I would have worded it differently.

Maybe saying that 'we won't be serving lunch/dinner but some light nibbles and finger foods will be available for all to enjoy.'

I really dislike any kind of remind you of your manners messages (leave the loo as you'd like to find it/wash up your cups/dont eat others' food from the fridge etc). People who need telling aren't going to take any notice and the rest are mildly offended.

Oh my goodness, why would they say that to guests, and recommend places to eat?
Maybe best not to have an evening do if you can't run to it. No shame in having a more modest wedding where everyone is relaxed and catered for.

Yep
Not only is everyone starving,everyone gets drunk very quickly
Loathe stingy weddings

It was meant in jest.

Oh I see 😅!

The worst.

An excellent wedding I went to almost 20 years ago in the North East had an evening ‘buffet’ of massive trays of midweek dinner type food - lasagne, curry or chilli and rice and something else I can’t remember now. Talking to the bride (a friend) it turned out this option was priced lower than the picky bits type options. Which makes absolute sense. It’s much cheaper to make big batches of this sort of food and presumably it keeps people drinking longer so you take more on the bar. And they didn’t look stingy- they looked generous, concerned about their guests and fun. It’s strange this option doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore.

The last few buffets I've been to there was almost zero left by the time I got to them. People love free food.

I feel embarrassed for the bride and groom having to say that, or feeling that they have to. The food should be, at the very least, adequate. I've never been to a wedding where the food has run out.

Op, it won't be just you who has received that extremely odd and inappropriate e-mail. Don't take a sandwich, tuck in. Everyone else will.

Maybe they have over-extended themselves and it's frightened them.