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.

But it's not 5 30 - midnight.
They're sitting down for a (3 course?). Meal at 5.30, so they won't be finished eating til 6.30/7

@Budka when are speeches?

A Group of us left a wedding to go to the nearest chip shop to grab good once as nothing was provided in the evening.

Weddings can be boring especially if you’ve been there all day so food breaks it up a bit.

Where I live weddings would usually be 3pm for the ceremony then drinks reception till around 5 while bridal party do photos. Speeches then dinner 5-7 ish, first dance 8pm light buffet around 10-1030 finishing up at midnight. I’ve noticed in more recent years it gets earlier and earlier! Cynic in me thinks its the wedding industry squeezing as much as they can out of their customers. Its a very long day & there is a lot of hanging about for guests .I much prefer a 3-4pm start & then there is less need for endless food! And nobody’s tipsy at 230 in the afternoon!

Nah, if you are not doing evening guests then it’s fine to just have a dinner imo. Most weddings I’ve been to did put out bacon/sausage baps type food around 10 pm - but I think they all had some evening guests “only”.

I’m sure pizzas wouldn’t get wasted as most people will usually manage free takeaway type food 🤣 (I include myself in that!). But unless everyone is doing a lot of dancing and only drinking water (and not ordering any alcohol or soft drinks which can sometimes be filling in themselves), I doubt many people would be that hungry by 10 after a big meal that finishes at what, about 7/7.30? Especially if they are able to help themselves from a cake/savory snack table afterwards which is what it sounds like.

Your attitude towards the amount of food available is making me laugh 😂

I think the canapes and drinks reception sounds nice and really normal for a wedding so ignore all the comments about it being ages to hang around, the idea is that you're chatting and having a drink and socialising. All fine.

But I do think after picking at canapes at 3.30, people might not eat as much at 5.30 as you are expecting. You keep going on about how much food there is - but just because the food is there, there's no guarantee they'll eat loads and then people will be starving by 9. If I'd had bhaji and stuff at 3 I wouldn't be in the mood for my dinner at 5.30 and it would seem like a long time to wait until midnight.
The snack table sounds nice - can that not just come out around 8/9? If not then I think rolls or burgers or pizza sound good.

OP have you never been tp a wedding? Pissed people get chatting, some stand at the back of the room and miss all the canapés as the gannets at the front hoover them all up. People get more pissed through the course of the afternoon and might not eat much during the dinner as they're drinking and chatting. So then yes they are hungry later. If there was no alcohol involved you'd need a lot less food but do you really want people to be complaining at your wedding about you being stingy? You are being incredibly judgemental here of people.

I would just expand your 'snack table' to fill it out a bit more and that should be fine.

Surely, people know dinner is served at 5.30pm.
Then it’s up to them to decide how much to eat etc…

Im amazed at how much thinking for people is going on there.
’Guests migut be too busy chatting and miss half of dinner so you need more food fir those who couldn’t be bothered to sit down’.

Ive never been to a wedding where food was provided ON TOP of dinner.
When a van type of things has been there, it’s always because it was THE food p, not as an addition.

This thread is such a pleasant juxtaposition against the one where poor old OP has been invited to the ceremony and evening do without so much as a cup of tea provided in between. Various other posters - who have arranged their own reception in such a miserly fashion- are trying to make out that this is totally normal.

Personally coming from NI, I've been taught that guests must leave any occasion clutching their tummies and groaning at their overindulgence or else you're a bad host. I think OPs spread sounds fine and doesn't need hot food at 10pm.

I’ve only ever been to one wedding that had “evening food” and I’ve been to a lot of weddings. I think your food and timings sound fine. You can bulk up the snack table with savoury as well as sweet so I think that’s more than enough food.

I think it all sounds fabulous @Budka You've thought of everything and your snack table sounds ideal (more than a snack table implies!). As you say, people can easily nip out for a quick something if they are starving later on, but I very much doubt it with the amount of food that is on offer.

Incidentally, Scottish wedding are bang on those timings - with a decent sized gap for wedding photos, lots of socialising, canapes and drinks after the ceremony. This is fairly standard.

Congratulations and have a magical wedding day.

Thank you! What a mean and inhospitable thing to do! Imagine having to go away for hours and occupy yourselves while they have the reception! Rude.

A friend with a fancy central London wedding did this & skimped on catering. We’re not sure how deliberate it was as it was otherwise very lavish with free flowing booze. We gave up at just after 9pm and hailed an Uber to take us home.

If anyone ever brings up her wedding the first comment is how hungry we all were. No one remembers the ceremony, flowers or decor - just that we were hungry. It was a long day.

If people are hungry enough they need to nip out for food they’re unlikely to return to the reception.

People are normal very hungry at wedding due to timings meaning a meal , normally lunch, is missed.

People will he ravenous by 3.30pm and fill up on what sounds like a evening buffet, rather than canapés.

I'm not sure guests will then be ready for a meal at 5.30pm..The reality is the canapés will run into the meal.

Can you not do the canapés and cocktails straight after the ceremony, maybe 2.30pm?

It also doesn't matter how much good you have provided earlier, guests will be hungry about 9 ish onwards.

I'm just going from years of wedding attending, and seeing the good, bad and ugly when it comes to catering

If people are hungry enough they need to nip out for food they’re unlikely to return to the reception

This has now reminded me of a wedding I went to in the 90s, quite a close friend in fact. By around 9pm me and my then dh were really hungry so we nipped out for fish & chips, sneaked them into the wedding hotel and ate them laying on the bed. Then fell asleep and woke up about 3am, got undressed and went back to sleep. Nobody noticed us missing, probably all too drunk. We woke up next morning fresh as daisies and the envy of all our friends who were nursing hangovers. It was fun being one of the first down for breakfast and watching all the others arrive, pretending to 'feel fine' and looking like death warmed up 😇

I would say if your ceremony starts at 1.45 then people won’t have had lunch before they come so will jump on the canapés as they’ll be really hungry and hitting the fizz and if dinner finishing by 7 I would provide something to soak up the alcohol like a cheese tower, sliders, pizza or similar.

Your wedding sounds amazing. But I would have a pizza van doing pizza slices at 9.45pm.

This.
I would have brunch before leaving home and I am more than capable of going more than 4 hours between meals. Canapes and a sit down meal that finishes around 7, no way do I need to eat again until the next day.

What OP is offering is pretty much what we did. Over twenty years later, friends still say it was the best wedding they have ever been to. So something went right without having to provide limitless food opportunities.

It’s a buffet served at 5:30.

I hear you, fellow weirdo.

Have read replies - tbh I’d ignore everything here and take the advice and guidance of the planners and venue? Our wedding was similar to yours in terms of style and timings. We did have a few evening guests, though, and did put on a buffet in the evening. Our wedding was for about 95 for the sit down meal and an additional 2o or so in the evening, in case that is relevant. I’d talk it through with the venue in terms of your numbers, how many are just evening guests, whether you have an open bar (you have? We did… a buffet/evening ‘snack’ slows down the drunkenness/soaks up alcohol if you are thinking of that?)

PS it sounds amazing btw!

Have read replies - tbh I’d ignore everything here

So what is the point in asking anonymous people on the internet, for a consensus ?

But then you advise what everyone else has said - that you do need food in the evening

Dinner needs to be about 430 so people can start eating at 5ish with speeches after. Save your money and ditch the station thing, and provide decent food to soak the alcohol up in the evening. Generally, that food comes out about 8:30

For me it’s not the amount of food, it’s the time between the end of the ceremony and the main meal. I probably would have got bored waiting for the meal to start and the photos to end and want to go home by the time the main meal is ready

It's a Las Vegas style buffet, which if done right is all you can eat. If you have had that kind of meal, with speeches and cake, finishing 6.30-7, plus another snack and cake table on offer, you really do not need another pizza/burger meal before the end of the evening.

The first time I was at a wedding and bacon sandwiches came out at midnight it BLEW MY MIND do it