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’m imagining a plate monitor standing at the end of the buffet!

Well quite. But I find it sad that you'd invite people to celebrate with you and not want them to be comfortable and enjoy themselves - which for most people, means not going hungry 😆

I get your point but I'm not sure I would feel comfortable writing this on pre wedding invites!

Friends of mine were skint, getting married, and on a tight budget. So what they did was, bought a dress on sale, the groom borrowed a suit from his brother, they had a family member do the flowers cheaply (they were lucky there) and kept the prices down, down down on everything they could, one wedding car, a very small bridal party, they even booked a sale holiday for their honeymoon.

And every one of the 80 guests got a sit down three course dinner, simple but filling, and there was an open bar for a couple of hours.

The bride and groom looked gorgeous, the day was amazing, everyone felt welcomed and wanted.

Because that's what you do at a wedding, you make your guests comfortable and you push out the boat a bit. If, that is, you want them to remember you well and remember your wedding well.

If you want them to remember you as a skinflint scold who was too cheap to feed their guests, you do this instead.

And of course, greedy people will still eat more than their share, but you've spoiled the fun for the decent people - which would have been most of them.

Unless, of course, the OPP and maybe one or two others were the only one who got this email, which would honestly be too funny.

Maybe it’s just me but I think this is rude and cheap and a bit nanny state.

Weddings are obscenely expensive anyway, trying to scrimp on the catering is a bit like looking for shrapnel down the back of the seats in your private jet.

That would irrationally annoy me.

Eat before you go.

It was still too little food...

This is why I always carry an 'emergency" egg with me!

How weird and tight. Never received anything like that.

I absolutely disagree that ' greedy people eat more than their share'. People eat what they need /want. No one else should be judging their portion sizes.

I have a small appetite and am a very picky eater so I often ignore buffets completely. . I have my aforementioned emergency egg in my bag and might maybe eat some salad but generally a buffet table full of beige food isn't appetising or appealing to me.

But just because it holds no interest to me doesn't mean that someone with a bigger appetite or different food preferences or is hungrier than me shouldn't eat exactly the amount they want.

I entertain a lot and I'd be mortified if someone left my house/venue without having had enough to eat. I'd much rather the family lived on leftovers for a few days than ration my guests.

I'm left wondering what the other instructions were?

I'm surprised how many people think this is OK. I find this very rude and would be paranoid about looking greedy if I took more than a couple of cocktail sausages! Most people know that evening food at weddings tends to be a finger buffet and not a full meal but, if they wanted to manage expectations, they could've written "light buffet" or similar on the invitation.

I went to a similar one around 8 years ago, strangely enough also in the North east! Nothing fancy, but good, staple dinners, a few to choose from, some sides and bread and left going until the last person had left the buffet alone. Was great.

It means not enough to fill you up and makes the evening guests sound like an afterthought - I’d be offended and be tempted not to go

I went to a wedding a few years ago as a day guest, and something similar was written on the invite, the wedding breakfast was afternoon tea style, and the invite specified for guests to have a big breakfast.

We did just that, had a big cooked breakfast at the hotel, but then were astonished by the actual amount of food, it just kept on coming all day 😂 I've never been so well fed.

Not rude per se, but they don’t mind saying it as it is!

Ah, the politics of food, always fraught! I don't blame them with a buffet, saying that. Some people are greedy pigs and will trough the lot. Like, are you a fucking farm cat? No. So back off.

I’ve seen both extremes. Ours was the over catered. There was so much food that MIL was begging our friends to get second plates or take it back to wherever they were staying. At the end I asked the manager to get the staff to take what they wanted so as little as possible was binned.

We went to a friend of DH’s evening reception. There was a free bar but little food. As we queued up I did a quick calculation and told DH it was probably two small sandwiches a sausage roll each. We stopped for take away on the way home we were so hungry.

Well quite. But I find it sad that you'd invite people to celebrate with you and not want them to be comfortable and enjoy themselves - which for most people, means not going hungry 😆

Thing is, I think the couple are probably providing plenty of food so long as people don't hog more than their fair share. (I think men are particularly bad at this, btw, I often see them with their plates piled ridiculously high at buffets.) I don't really see anything wrong in what is basically a reminder to be considerate. They shouldn't have to order twice as much food just in case some people only think of themselves and behave like gannets.

We were at a wedding recently in the queue for the buffet and my DH whispered 'it looks like he's got his weeks shopping on his plate', and yes by the time we got to the table there was very little left. 😂

Well, one thing is for sure, with their rude, snarky, scolding email harassing guests with vague admonitions, they have ensured everyone will always remember their wedding for all the wrong reasons.

Yeah they are basically saying ‘this isn’t your full tea it’s just food to soak up alcohol’
Forewarned!

If you are providing enough food then you never have to tell people not to eat.

The reality is almost certainly that they have under catered and trying to scrimp in the one area they most definitely should NOT be scrimping. They've made themselves the subject of gossip and derision, and it was a very bad idea indeed to send this email.