Wedding catering options with no kitchen at venue

[weddinghelp2026]

Posted this in Weddings but I think this board has more traffic!

Have booked our venue for July 2026- its a village hall type place, so no kitchen or fridges and we have to organise catering ourselves. My head is spinning a bit from the different options!

• Pizza van/other food truck- the venue said other weddings have done this, however when I've been to an event with this sort of thing it's always massive queues
• Hot buffet in warmer trays- is this just a bit naff?
• Cold buffet- is this substantial enough a meal?

We're doing the legal bit the day before so this will be a late event- 5ish start with a short faux ceremony/blessing and some speeches then straight into the party. Quite casual and low key, about 100 guests.

Is there another food option I'm not considering??

I think a cold buffet is fine as long as there's enough and it's substantial...cold quiches, cold cuts, cold poached salmon, robust salads like potato salad, pasta salad, plenty of bread/cheese etc

I would go with pizza van/gourmet burger van/falafel wrap Middle Eastern food van. Depending on how many people are coming, have more than one or the queues will be crazy.
Congratulations.

I'd get a local catering company to do a hot and cold buffet or similar.

We had a cold buffet early on then hot samosas and bhajis delivered for late evening munchies!

I had a similar event recently as a christening, the staff from the truck did table service which worked well to prevent queues! Before attending everyone selected a plant based burger, fish burger, beef burger or chicken burger and they were all bought a fresh one based on a coloured wrist band when they got there. Sauces in the middle of the table, slices of cheese and shredded lettuce- easy!

How many people are you having? That would play a big factor in my decision. As a guest I would prefer a Hot Buffet but depending on your numbers a cold buffet would work.

Cold buffet is fine. I had a similar kind of setup for a big-decade birthday and I had loads of comments about hiw splendid the food was. If the venue is anywhere in the west country area, PM me and I'll recommend the specific caterer.

I went to one with a paella lady cooking three enormous paellas on gas stove things. It was great. We had bread and salads on a different table.

For the buffet options w ill you use caterers or are you looking to DIY?

Thanks for this, some suggestions I'd not thought of.

Definitely caterers, will not want to DIY!

It'll be about 100 guests.

Cousin got married in a field with no facilities at all. They had a hot buffet for the actual sit down meal (catered by proper caterers), followed by a pizza van in the evening. Queues weren’t an issue because pizza van was for evening food so people ate it as and when. And because they already had a meal, it wasn’t like 1 pizza per person, but more like 1-2 pizzas per family/group.

If you want to do food trucks, you will need to have more than one and/or not have a formal dinner time, because if people just eat when they get hungry, there is less of a rush.

I’m not personally keen on a cold buffet. It says baby shower/80th birthday/funeral to me. If I was going to be somewhere late into the evening with no other food options, I’d want more than cheese, crackers and a sausage roll.

I would get caterers to do a BBQ- salads, breads, sides in the centre of tables and people going up table by table to get the bbqed stuff- a good caterer would manage this for you!

One thing to consider with food trucks is controlling costs. With a buffet, you agree a set cost per head. With food trucks, I think it’s generally like an estimate of, say, 80 pizzas at whatever cost. But what if people get tipsy and go back for seconds and end up ordering 120 pizzas. Unless you agree a cut off, you can have guests wracking up quite a bill.

We did paella for our wedding party (eloped but had party after). Street food truck vibes but none of the waiting of pizza etc. then cookies for dessert that were delivered to venue earlier that day and handed out, plus cheese boards out in the venue from the beginning of the party to snack on. Went down v well!

Hog roast? We went to a wedding which had one - so that was some hot food, everything else was cold (rolls plus side dishes). It was much faster than a typical food van.

I think if doing a food truck for that many, they need to be geared up to actually deliver 100 meals, and in less than 3 hours.

I would get caterers. For hot food - they can probalby offer suggestions that they can then also bring heating equipment. Or we went to one the other day where they made paella in those huge vats and served from there. If there's any outside space, spit BBQ can work too.

Cold food is fine, but your caterers have to be prepared to do it properly - that means they need refrigeration in advance, and food that's a lot more impressive looking than a few bits of charcuterie. Whole sides of salmon that sort of thing.

We get our local curry house to cater for our school quiz night and they just bring in massive trays of curry, rice, nan bread and samosas and serve it all up. If you send people up to get served table by table then you avoid queues and you could always put samosas and poppadums in middle of tables to keep people happy before they get called up. We manage to serve over 100 people in less than 45 minutes. That’s if you want people sitting at tables I guess. And if you like curry!