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 think the issue here is that it sounds like SO MUCH FOOD. And yet I'm not a big eater and have only ever been to (catered) weddings where the food was a bit scarce. A caterer will sell it as a 'Vegas style buffet' because no way would you part with £70 a head or more for a regular buffet... and 'filling canapés' (an oxymoron surely) when in reality they have catered for 3 items per person and those who have positioned themselves correctly manage to scoff a dozen, while a few empty tray circulate etc. As a veggie the sit down meal is usually cauliflower 'steak' or something. I just think you really can't over cater because whatever the caterers say, the portions will be on the small side.

View a wedding like you would Christmas. There's nothing to do but talk. People will just eat more than usual.

Forgot to add: have an amazing day

What is the difference between a Las Vegas buffet and a normal one ? Does it just reference the quantity of food ?

As I said upthread, buffets are all very well provided you can guarantee everyone has equal access to food and vegetarians and other special diets are catered for without it being eaten by others.

Ah, that's fair enough then.

It sounds fine to me if you have a snack and cake table for the evening.
Key question is are you having any evening only guests? Generally the evening food is aimed more at the guests not invited to the wedding ceremony and sit down meal. So if you have a lot of people with evening only invitation you may want to increase catering in the evening.
Does the hydration station include teas and coffees? Or is it basically a water cooler?tea and coffee is hard to come by at wedding so that would be a bonus imo

In my experience of Scottish weddings and evening buffet is expected

My sister did this at her wedding and there were lots of very hungry kids and adults! After the main meal there was only wedding cake… nothing else!

Especially kids! They didn’t like the fruitcake so they hadn’t eaten much all day, they were bridesmaids and had to be at the venue a considerable distance away by 10.30am so had eaten breakfast at 8am, then the main meal was at 3pm and then nothing was provided apart from wedding cake.

We knew about this in advance and had some sandwiches and snacks in a cool bag in the car for 8:30pm when the kids were hungry! We saw the adults emptying the bar of crisps and nuts with the bar running out by 9pm.

It’s usual to put on an evening buffet or extra food as people definitely get hungry. We had a hot and cold buffet in the evening and we also had a tier of chocolate cake for our wedding for the kids and people who didn’t like fruitcake. This was in addition to a two course Wedding Breakfast - we thought that spreading the food out over the whole day was a better option, and balanced this with skipping a starter on the wedding breakfast.

Despite all the effort my sister put into the wedding, the lack of food is the thing that people remember most of all!

But most people can only eat a certain amount in one go. A buffet served at 5:30 isn’t going to still be getting eaten at 7pm. It doesn’t take an hour and a half to eat a plate of food. Most people will be done by 6.

We did the same, had a cheeseboard laid out around 11pm.

I did exactly this and didn't provide a buffet or anything to eat after we had finished our reception , which ended at about 8 pm.
We have been married for 31 years and there s not a year that passes without me saying that I wish we'd provided something later on! Big regrets.. no one commented, but I look back and I feel like it would have been appreciated, especially by the guests that joined us later for the party..
It was a brilliant wedding though, so I reckon it wouldnt have mattered to anyone... But it still bothers me🙄🤣

Are you having evening guests that won’t have the meal? Usually you have some type of evening buffet for those people plus enough for others to pick at.

We put on an evening buffet. It was a waste of money, hardly anyone touched it.

That really doesn’t sound very filling tbh, in fact it sounds like what is usually the evening buffet. If that is in place of a wedding breakfast then you absolutely should provide food later on.

It’s not. That’s the snack table in addition to the wedding breakfast.

Sounds lovely @Budka but i would shorten the time between the ceremony and the meal. 4 hours is a lot of time. Not for you maybe as you will be occupied with photos etc but for your guests who are just sat around waiting. I know you said there is an attraction etc. I got married at 2pm and had our meal at 430pm and that was long enough.

When planning our wedding, we were very conscious of the waiting around d we have done at other weddings between ceremony and food. Even with some canapés, it's a loooong wait until sitting down for a meal. We finished in the church at 2 and were sat eating at 3.30. We managed a few drinks and canapés, a handful of group photos and us as a couple disappearing with the photographer for some pics in that time. Please don't end up with everyone hanging around for hours bored, and being shepherded in and out of posed photos for ages.
Eat earlier and have some food for the evening if you're expecting guests to stay late and/or inviting others for the evening.

I don’t think two hours is too long to mingle, is it?

There will be very filling canapés, drinks, cocktails, guided tours of the venue, lawn games. There is going to be a performer from fiancé’s home country. It’s only a small wedding (70 people) so everyone will get a chance to chat.

All on a pretty terrace with a view. Fingers crossed there will be good weather mid August.

70 is not a small wedding for most people! Also, what time does the ceremony finish? Canapés at 3:30, but how long are people waiting before that?

1:45-3:30pm is a bit of a gap but that includes the ceremony itself and transport between venues via red bus. The church and reception are 4 miles apart but there can be traffic. We’ve done the a dummy run a couple of times and it takes 25 mins on average.

I was thinking of passing around homemade shortbread on the bus just to hold people over. I dunno. The constant feeding is freaking me out.

Shortbread is an odd option, I think something g more savoury would be better, but I'd just try and bring the food forward tbh.

We have Scottish connections.

I think when it comes to weddings, cater for more food than you would think would be necessary. For context, we had canapés then a huge 5 course wedding breakfast (salmon starter, soup, fillet steak with loads of trimmings, sticky toffee pudding, fruit cake). There was a cheese table groaning in cheese and in the evening fish and chips in a cone. At the end of the night, there was a bit of cheese left. The thing is, people want to indulge and they’re drinking and dancing

Also, it's not constant feeding, it's just timing it right!
I'd do lighter canapés, eat earlier at 4ish, then evening food about 7 or 8pm to tide everyone over (especially after drinking!).
Don't worry about the photos, you really don't need 50 different group pics with/without spouses, best friends etc. Do wedding party, each side of the immediate family, a big group one with everybody and then any special people you'd appreciate a photo with like grandparents.

If you have evening guests, yes you need to provide some food. If not, no but make food timings clear on invitations. I’ve seen lovely sort of itineraries that people can send out to guests so that they know what to expect and know to eat before / after if they choose.