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.

Not far off.

It’s not 90 minutes though, at least double that.

The timings allow for run over/London traffic.

I think this is just the AIBU vipers - the same vipers who only eat one meal a day...

The problem is that people can only eat a certain amount at once. If they have six substantial canopies at 3:30pm, how hungry will they be at 5:30? They won’t eat much and then will be hungry again a few hours later, especially when drinking. Cheese, charcuterie and cake is well and good but after a long day of drinking people will want something more substantial.

I'm with you OP! It's so much food and you are already feeding them 3 times!

Sounds perfect to me...I'm in London :)

It does sound piggy to expect more but by the same token you are sucking up at least 12 hours of your guests' time ( including getting ready, commuting etc.)

Why not just end the reception at 9?

99 percent of your guests would be relieved and those who want to continue can go out clubbing.

The last two weddings where I stayed to the bitter end had a little savory buffet plus a selection of cookies, and a few coffee urns set out, around 10:30.

The savory buffets had finger foods like mini sausage rolls, fruit and cheese skewers, crab rangoon, ham and cheese pinwheels (like cinnamon rolls but with ham and cheese), egg rolls, spring rolls, stuffed dates, gougeres.

Because people are drinking & dancing and will be hungry again. On a normal evening few people would by hungry by 9pm but it’s entirely different if you’re away from home, drinking and dancing.

Weddings are by their nature fairly long and boring in parts for guests (even if held at a “world class attraction”) so it’s up to you if you want your guests to be at times both bored and hungry.

You do sound a tad weird about food. No one’s saying feed guests every hour, just give them pizza or bacon sandwiches at 9pm else you’ll get quite a few people leaving early - no one tolerates a mix of mild boredom and hunger unless they’re obligated to be there, and will rationalise that 9 hours is enough time as a guest & head home.

Not everyone eats cheese in the evening and homemade cakes are just sugar and not much help soaking up alcohol.

Our fish and chips at night went down a storm too. We were gonna go for the cheese and crackers, charcuterie etc option for the late food thinking it’d be a bit more elegant and suitable for a nice wedding but so glad we didn’t. We were really surprised how guests raved about the fish and chips for ages afterwards. Amazing what some booze will do for the appetite I suppose! But then I love hot salty food when drunk too.

I’d have taken one of DH’s relatives for the taste test personally. We are mixed heritage too and DH has a similar heritage. He has plenty of brutally candid aunties who love/know their food and how to make people happy with food to choose from. 😆

The problem with a buffet is that unless it's a bottomless buffet, some people are not going to have a chance to eat much because others will raid it before they get their turn.

With a sit-down meal, at least everyone gets a plate of food and can eat it or leave it. People have a chance to chat and munch while sitting at their tables.

With a buffet, people have to get up and help themselves - conversations are interrupted, and the same goes for canapés - people have to interrupt a conversation to eat, people grab something they can easily eat while holding a glass in the other hand, and they'll choose strategically so they won't end up with a big chunk of food to chew while trying to chat. If people have to get their own canapés and you don't have servers, they'll have to leave conversation groups to load a plate. They'll take quite a few items because they won't want to have to return every ten minutes.

I guarantee many of your guests are not going to have enough to eat during the day - buffet, canapés, charcuterie, cheese, homemade cakes and crisps are not going to fuel your guests - and will be considering leaving for the nearest Maccys before 10 pm.

I think for all day guests it will probably be okay, but if you have evening guests arriving after the dinner, the buffet is more for them. If you do t have any evening only guests then you'll prob be okay.

With the weddings I have been to all day, I personally have lnt touched any of the evening food as been too full, but have had some buffet when been an evening only guests.

YYY to the issues with the canapés.
The same issues can arise with a buffet meal.

How is a guest going to eat those canapés if he or she is holding a glass of champagne in their other hand?

@Budka
Instead of having the burger van at 10pm, have the cheesecake, crackers & pickles later in the evening instead of serving with the canapés.

If you serve cheese at 3:30pm, it'll fill people up so shift the cheese to the evening instead. I see your timings are set so you can't move the dinner to 6:30pm so serve the cheese at 9pm instead.

The thread below suggests all the things that go wrong at weddings are mainly down to lack of food:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/amibeingunreasonable/5290523-weddings-you-went-to-where-things-went-wrong

OP, as long as there is a decent amount on the snack table, and it's out late enough in the evening (because people will want something after drinking probably, rather than quickly after meal), that sounds good. Ignore the people being deliberately argumentative. It sounds like a fantastic and generous event.

The last wedding I went to has similar timings and the evening food was a pizza oven, but they had evening only guests as well and to be honest I think they ate most of the pizza as it was quite early in the evening do. I wasn't hungry when it came out, and by the time I did fancy some they'd stopped making it, so I just had a leftover slice which wasn't the best. But I wasn't really that hungry, and I also had some wedding cake, so I hadn't thought about the disappointing pizza again until this thread, and it certainly isn't what I think of when I think of that wedding. Unlike some who seem to claim food disappointment is the only thing they'd remember! Ultimately if you are in central London, it's not like they can't get food on way home if they are hungry by then. It's very different from being on a country hotel middle of nowhere where you can't get anything else until breakfast next morning.

Yes wedding timings can be awkward for guests but that's normal in my experience (so are lots of events - had to fit in a brunch / early lunch yesterday to get my son to a kids party for example). As long as you are clear about what timings are, then if guests can't look after themselves properly (eat 'brunch', wear shoes they can walk a short distance in so they can take part in the arranged activities and dancing etc) then that's their problem. Most weddings now seem to have a long gap between ceremony and sit down meal, especially if different venues. I'm surprised people are surprised by that.

I'm interested to know more about how the buffet works though - what makes it a buffet if it's brought to the table, as that messes with what I thought the definition of a buffet was? I'm not familiar with the concept.

Haven’t RTFT but read your posts OP and I see your wedding is being picked apart.

I think it sounds great and your timings and food are fine. I also got married in central London, slightly earlier ceremony in church, also did drinks and canapés before the meal (that time slot included a line up which I imagine people on here would hate as it meant they couldn’t eat at the same time) then meal at about 4.30 as I recall. No burger van, just cake and loads of cheese. Like you, no evening guests. I’m confident no-one thought there wasn’t enough food.

I think central London makes a slight difference. It’s not like you’re stranding them in the middle of nowhere.

I’m intrigued by where it is. Are your guests walking from church to big venue? Ours were right next to each other.

Especially don’t listen to those dissing the drinks on the terrace. A lovely totally normal and expected gap between ceremony and meal where you can relax after the formality and chat to your guests.

Yes good a nine, I’ve been to weddings where the meal was awful and relied on the evening buffet

My wedding timings are similar to you and we’re also doing canapés and a buffet dinner but we’re also having rolls and bacon at 10pm. I would expect some sort of food at around then because people will be pretty drunk by that point.

Why are people referring to the dinner as a 'wedding breakfast'? I'm completely baffled!!!

I'm irish not sure where you are from but here there might be canapés and welcome drinks then the sit down meal and later in the evening there would be more food but there again no wedding would end at 12 so it would be needed. Maybe just chips and goujons or sandwiches. This would apply with or without evening guests

@theyoungishman that is what it is traditionally called, whatever time you eat it. It is the first main meal after you are married, so you are breaking fast

I'm going to be honest here my cousin had a wedding very much how yours sounds and it was a complete shitshow she didn't do the evening guest thing either and everyone was leaving by 7:30/8pm because they had run out of money from all the waiting around earlier in the day and the place was EXPENSIVE , the guests were bored to tears by the time we sat down for food as we had been sat in the bar for 4+ hours ,after food we were then waiting around another few hours before the evening reception began
Evening food was being brought out as everyone was leaving to go home .

There ‘not much you can do’? There’s a very simple thing you can do. Just provide pizza or similar at around 10ish. Honestly, even more so if you’ve got an open bar! Problem solved. Or be prepared for people to leave early or to remember your wedding as ‘the one where there wasn’t enough food’