Wedding Afternoon Tea - Opinions please!

[DearDiary321]

Hey everyone!

We have started planning for our wedding which will be next June.

It will be a small intimate wedding of 25 guests. Registry office wedding at 3pm followed by a few photos outside the town hall, then a short drive to our reception location (a country park) with more photos here as it is beautiful. The building that the reception is in opens for us at 5 and ends at 9. There will be welcome drinks on arrival and a few canapés.

We have exclusive use of the venue for our reception, which is lovely but very small. The venue only offers cheese/meat platters so allows us to provide our own catering instead which we are going to do. We were originally thinking a cold buffet (there's no option for the food to be kept hot) but space is limited for where the buffet would actually be set out.

This led me to think of the idea of afternoon tea as the food would be on tiered stands on the tables we are sat at and therefore wouldn't need a designated buffet table. Has anyone done this before/been to a small afternoon wedding and had this? If so, how was it?

We would make sure there was a surplus of sandwiches etc so that the stands could be refilled if needed and people weren't left hungry.

We were thinking one stand between 2 people. With the stands having an array of nice sandwiches, pinwheel wraps, scones with jam and cream, nice mini pork pies with chutney, sausage rolls etc at first.

Then we were thinking of these being collected and coming back out later with little cakes and other desserts on them. We thought doing it this way would ensure that people would have enough food? People would have eaten breakfast and lunch before the wedding, and our invites will specify that it will be afternoon tea. What do you think to the idea of having the cakes separately rather than on the top layer of the stand?

What are your opinions on this please?

Thanks!

I like the idea of afternoon tea, and I think doing it separately as ‘courses’ is absolutely fine

I do think in an afternoon tea it’s nice to mix between cake and sandwiches because I can’t really eat cake after cake
but I don’t think it matters, it’s your day, it’ll be a nice novelty and it meets all your criteria

I guess my worry would be who is making these sandwiches as they don't stay fresh very long at all (I took some to a buffet two weeks ago and they were crusty in 20 mins I was shocked tbh)

I think it sounds lovely. Sometimes the simpler ideas are the best.

M&S have all this you can order pre prepared it's all very nice.
Waitrose might do the same in which it will also be just as good.

I think this would be fine for a stand-up canapé reception but I would expect that to last no longer than two hours and to take place between 2pm and 5pm. If your guests will be with you from 5pm to 9pm I think you need to provide something more substantial as they will be there at what slips into dinner time.

It comes under party food - sandwich platters

These and you can buy small cakes from anywhere so that part is easy. The sandwiches will be more popular

I think the issue is that if people might not have a very substantial lunch if they are going to a wedding - they might be travelling so don't have a chance, or even f not travelling I wouldn't want to eat a main meal and then put on a nice dress! So it might be sandwich for lunch and sandwich for dinner. However, I guess if you make it clear what you are serving they can try to have a more substantial lunch.

I went to a wedding that had afternoon tea. It was all very pretty and delightful but everything was very small and if you are as much as you wanted to (ie enough to fill you up) you looked very greedy...However, we hadn't realised that there was a massive meal later on, had we known this we wouldn't have tried to fill up on tiny cakes!

Thats true I hadn't thought about that! Maybe we keep it mixed but keeping refilling them if necessary

Thank you! I was literally looking at these earlier on. Great idea

I think this sounds a lovely idea 💕

How will you keep the sandwich fillings refrigerated? No ones going to die from warm cheese, but most other fillings will need to be kept cool.

I love an afternoon tea, they can be very substantial.

We went to a wedding not dissimilar, I was bloody starving, the food was lovely but seriously, I needed something more substantial, we’d travelled down, no time for anything for breakfast which was just cereal as we had to head off quite early. Having said that, this wedding was at lunch time and it was around 4 by the time we got food.

However in your case this could work just make it clear what the food options will be and as you have a small number of guests maybe link in a couple of options for lunch beforehand if they’re travelling.

Given that your wedding is at 3, even people travelling should have time to eat en route. You do need to make it clear that it will be an afternoon tea though.
Re not wanting to eat lunch all dressed up, I probably wouldn't travel in my wedding outfit anyway if I was travelling any more than a couple of hours.
Any one travelling less than that has time for a substantial breakfast or a pub lunch.
And as much as I love my food, I could survive on sandwiches for lunch and an afternoon tea on the same day.

We had Afternoon Tea for our wedding. We had sandwiches, pork pies, sausage rolls and mini quiches, both meat and veggie options. Cakes and scones. Plenty of extra to be topped up as and when.
we then did an evening buffet of burgers and chips.

We had an afternoon tea for our wedding, albeit it was for a big wedding, but it went down wonderfully with our guests.

A few things to consider:

1. As a PP said, you do need to let your guests know, so it was included in our invites that it would be afternoon tea (we did have a hot meal in the evening, so put that on too). Would you be doing a hot meal at all on the evening? I would strongly recommend you do. I don’t think the afternoon tea is enough. Even if guests knew it was afternoon tea, a further hot meal later on, eg pizza oven, fish and chip van, BBQ van, would fill a food void. There’s loads of food suppliers for weddings that come to the venue and cook in their vans, with no need for access to a kitchen, so that could also be an option. We did afternoon tea and a BBQ.

2. Canopies were a good decision in between service and afternoon tea. We got nice ones from Waitrose (hot or cold) but they’re a good filler whilst you have pictures and sitting down.

3. consider who is doing the afternoon tea. Despite it being a small amount of people, I’d definitely find a supplier who specialises. We were all for doing ourselves (amongst family) even brought all the crockery from various charity shops, job lots etc, but then ended up finding a supplier who did everything - food, crockery, even hired us waitresses/waiters, for a set price per person. It was a good deal and we could pick the fillings, cakes etc. which, were the talk of the wedding to be honest (Everyone loved the cakes) It’s not clear from your OP if you’re on about doing it yourself: I would steer clear of doing that. Don’t forget it isn’t just the baking, making and preparing food, it’s serving it to your guest and removing it, washing up etc. you don’t want that on your wedding day. again, the supplier supplied us staff that we paid for per hour + margin for them. They were fab too.

4. due to the cake overload, consider a different wedding cake! We went with pork pie 😉 again, went down well, a little different. We looked at cheese versions (they’re quite smelly but have been to a wedding with one, awesome to eat cheese and crackers at midnight!) something to consider.

Hope this helps

I went to a wedding that did this. It was lovely but not really enough food- with lots of alcohol on top everyone was absolutely wrecked. It was a brilliant wedding though and everyone had a ball! If you don’t want everyone quite so drunk then I would put something a bit more substantial.

My son went to one recently - 4pm wedding then afternoon tea but they had a BBQ later or could you get a hog roast, pizza van or fish & chip van?

I would think people usually have a meal at that time. Afternoon tea is too light a meal for dinner time but I do like (love) the idea for the afternoon, about 2 pm.
Maybe you can hire a food truck to come serve hot food?

I've been to 2 weddings with afternoon tea. Both were lovely but both were early afternoon wedding, then the afternoon tea.

I'm not sure it works so much as an evening meal, having waiting around for quite some time after the ceremony.
That is speaking as someone who does love an afternoon tea (although I share the concern about it being a nightmare for anyone who needs to avoid gluten).

Not to do with the food, but are you expecting all the guests to travel to the photos venue ?

Ultimately, with any wedding the key is to let guests know what the plan for the day is, and then, even if people think it is a bit odd, they can plan their travel / clothes / eating / etc knowing what to expect.

If it came with fizz instead of tea I'd be happy

Sounds charming!

I might have tiered stands with cheese too as it's filling for those who are drinking. And plenty of champagne.

I think if it's clear on the invitation "ceremony followed by afternoon tea" people can plan accordingly.

I think 3 hours is more than plenty though. Personally I'd stop at 6pm.

We had this. Married at 3pm, tea from 4pm, everyone left at 6pm. Most went to the pub, we went back to our hotel. There was plenty of food—sandwiches, little quiches, scones, brownies, tiny fruit tarts—and lots left over. I don't see how anyone could have been left hungry; plenty of time for lunch before.