Do people expect food after dinner at wedding?

[Budka]

Ceremony is at 1:45 pm. We are serving very filling canapés and cocktails at 3:30pm and dinner at 5:30pm. There will be the actual cake, a homemade cake table, hydration station and a snack table. The wedding ends at midnight. The meal itself is A LOT, we are doing a sit down buffet (think Las Vegas buffet).

I've seen trends where a pizza/burger van turns up as guests are leaving.

Would you as a guest expect more food after dinner?

I personally wouldn’t. I do feel people get weird at weddings re good where they almost expect to be fed and watered on the hour, every hour. But in everyday life you would probably be happy with eating far less (I do appreciate dancing, drinking causes hunger).

But would you expect to be given more food after dinner and cake?

My sister thinks we should order a load of pizza to send people away with.

i dunno i find the idea a bit ott. We are serving a lot of food. People are not those bottomless pits! But I obviously wouldn’t want people to actually be hungry.

I’d be really hungry by 10pm if drinking and dancing and not eaten since 5:30. In fact I might want to leave by 11 to get cheesy chips rather than staying until the end. I’ve never been to a wedding where they had no evening food, it’s expected

This. Dd got married couple years ago. Dinner was at 5.30pm so we had a load of pizza slices and burgers served up at 10pm. Glad we did because lots of people were hungry again. Drinking makes people peckish imo

I got married at 2pm, then did canapés and drinks outside, then meal at 530, and a bbq van at 9pm. Honestly by 9pm everyone was starving again with all the alcohol and it being a long day.
If you don’t want to do evening food, could you instead bring out the snack table at 9pm and use that as the evening food?
You run the risk of people leaving early to get food on the way home, but if that isn’t something that bothers you then I really wouldn’t worry! You’ll have a fabulous day and probably not care about any of it on the day anyway!

I think so too - and I crave hot, savoury (and salty!) food after a few.

It's the dancing too - an hour of dancing is essentially an hour of aerobic exercise 😂 And you want everyone (who can) at your wedding to be dancing, it means they're enjoying themselves.

I don’t think you need the burger van personally. I’d have the dinner, speeches etc always takes some time. Then about 8:30 or so lay out a ‘snack table’ as you call it like this, tiered cheeses, crackers, grapes, maybe charcuterie, olives, pickles, maybe some hummus and crudités, nuts almost like a post dinner cheese course alone with the wedding cake. This will be perfect to soak up the booze and satisfy peckish dancers

@ScarlettOYara

We went with a kinda Middle East thing. Hummus, an aubergine spice spread, olives. My chief bridesmaid is vegetarian so she got to choose!

Sounds nice! I'm vegetarian and sometimes the choice is awful, or other people eat it! The best vegetarian food I had was at a Jewish wedding. Delicious.

If you are providing a decent meal starting at 5.30 - so presumably finishing up about 6.30 - I personally think that's fine if things are finishing up at midnight.

You could serve cake or bacon rolls or something a bit later on if you really wanted to but honestly I think most people will perfectly happy with what you have planned.

I would struggle with your timings rather than what is on offer. If guests had to allow one hour plus for travel, time to have a blow dry, get dressed do their make up, I wouldn’t imagine they would want to risk spilling foot on their outfit before the ceremony or going into Pret with a wedding hat. It would be ok if they lived really locally or were in a local hotel and had a late breakfast or a light lunch. We got married at noon, as did DC. Then champagne reception and straight to sit down 4 course wedding breakfast, then change of venue at 5.30-6, drinks on the lawn, then a dance with an Italian restaurant doing the evening catering, offering a choice of dishes when the band had their evening break. So basically eating at near to normal lunch and dinner time.

I agree. If the wedding is in central London, I would assume most guests need a good hour to get there so would be leaving home 11.30 / midday. They as most likely to have breakfast, get ready and leave therefore missing lunch. No one thinks of popping to Pret in their wedding finery!
The canapés may fill a hole after the wedding, but most are going to be hungry by 5.30. Then drinking and dancing..I'd want something to soak it up at 10ish.

Not really sure why you have asked here then ?

I don't think I am unusual, in that after a "more filling than Christmas dinner" buffet, I wouldn't then have capacity for cheeses and home made cakes.
Why not have your buffet (and I'd still suggest by 4 at the latest if your wedding is 1.45, and you are no doubt instructing guests to be there 45min - an hour before), then bring out all this extra food - your "snack table", your cheeses, and your home made cakes at 8.30 / 9pm when people will be ready for food.

Oof v bad plan. It's completely standard to have further food available if you are having an early dinner, as you are. This is usually something like a hog roast van, hot dog van, burger bar, pizza oven etc. Most guests will be ravenous by 9.30.

I do feel like people will expects some type of food, a finger buffet minimum. It’s like on Xmas day after that huge lunch people still find room for a small ‘tea’

We had a 1.30pm wedding, followed by canapés and drinks. 4.30ish we had our meal (3 courses) followed by a hot chocolate station and then evening food at around 9pm. We had hot dogs (proper sausages and veggie/ vegan options) and loaded fries. I didn’t think the evening food would go as well as it did but a lot went! The venue also provided little takeaway boxes for the evening food for people to take with them if they wanted to. I don’t think it’s a must but we did have separate evening guests and wanted to make sure they were fed too!

If last meal is 5:30pm and everyone is going to be drinking and partying then I’d defo offer more food at 9-10pm, be it a burger/pizza van or something else.

If already doing a snack table, just make it more substantial? We had sausage rolls, cheeses, that sort of thing at our evening food buffet thing and it was all eaten and went down a treat. I wish we had thought to cut up more cake as the tier we cut all went and there was loads of it left for us to take! Bring the snack food out at 9ish and it will be fine.

I would like something to soak up the alcohol. A bacon roll would be perfect.

That sounds like a YOU problem to be honest.

People are going to be hungry after a 5.30 meal, ridiculous and quite selfish not to feed them.

Anyone else fancying a bacon roll now? 😂😋

You would be best doing the sit down meal earlier and the canapes later on. I can guarantee a lot of meals will go to waste if they have had canapes a few hours before.

We didn't - we did canapés and drinks on arrival after the ceremony, about 3:30 ish

Then 3 course dinner at 4:30

The venue offered a bbq for an evening buffet but at the cost per head we decided not to, as it made it so much more expensive, and we'd been to someone's wedding at the same venue and they said the bbq wasn't used enough to have made it worth it

Instead, we provided a couple of big boxes of crisps they could help themselves to, and a sweetie cart. The cake was also cut and available for people to eat.

The crisps and sweets went down well, people used them - there were left overs i think we ordered way too many sweets and I was sick of the sight of them by the time we worked through the blasted things, despite giving bags away!

We did pop a note on any evening guest's invitations that there wouldn't be food so they knew to eat before coming, but we only had a very small handful of those so it's not like a load of people were arriving, probably only around 5 or so were evening only

Agree with this.

There seem to be two main opinions on here (apart from those who think it’s fine as it is):

1. That the main meal is too late - I don’t necessarily agree with this as the ‘canapés’ sound substantial and most people will be able to organise a decent brunch before they travel if they are aware of timings for the day.
2. That food is needed later on in the evening - I do agree with this but some of the replies don’t seem to account for the snacks that the OP has already said will be provided.

Like you, my thinking would just be to make sure the snack table is substantial enough (and of course it’s hard to judge but it might mean adding a couple more options) and have it brought out around 9pm.

We had similar timings and I was like you, not sure it was necessary. My DH over-rules me and we served cheese board/crackers and bacon butties at around 9pm and it was all devoured! We didn’t have evening only guests either.

Yes if goes on longer than 6-7pm. If wedding finishes at 6pm that's ok. Weddings make you hungry especially if dancing....

In that case I think that's plenty of food.