The last wedding we attended was a buffet. It was great.
Amazing venue overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge
My kids both had plated dinners, one kid sat with the wedding party, the other sat by themselves.
I like a buffet in that I can pick the type and how much I want to eat that day. Sometimes after the cocktail hour I’m pretty full. One of my kids had so much food on the plate it felt ridiculous and a waste.
I’m not a huge fan of dress codes. The last wedding we went to was a Sunday brunch. Everyone seemed to know how to dress appropriately as people do in my experience.
My niece had a dress code. She had links to what to wear which was quite distressing to my mil who knows what to wear to a wedding. She did not know how to interpret garden party/vacation chic.
My mother has opined at every family wedding that when she was married, they just had cake and punch after the 1:00 ceremony and as such, considered anything more a ridiculous waste of money.
I am curious about various seating notifications, whatever you call the part where guests are told where they sit. I’ve seen charm bracelets, seed packets, wooden heart charms, scrolls — and also just a printed list posted prominently. I think my favorite has been paint chips! Bride had collected enough over the prior months and everyone got one with their name and table number – it made for a really pretty display, at least until it was time to sit down.
As I already posted, little kid chose a venue where the only sitting arrangement available was a long farmtable. Food was served family-style, kind of a middle road between plated and buffet.
The cake and punch wedding ‘reception’ sometimes seems like either a regional thing or a small church thing with the reception in the church hall.
Interesting to learn that sweetheart tables were from more than just the most recent years.
Sometimes it is the way the room and the guests are (or the size and layout of the tent), along with the size of the wedding party on if there is going to be a wedding party long table which may or may not include those outside of bridesmaids and groomsmen with the bride and groom.
My niece had assigned tables; orderly going through the buffet - which included hot prime rib and it was delicious. They had more than twice the number of flowers that were needed for great flowers (in part because it was a large semi-permanent tent area - specific for weddings most seasons and maybe what the floral people recommended), but had cupcakes instead of having wedding cake perhaps because of the upcharges made for plating cake and how much maybe the wedding cake was also going to cost.
The buffet ‘mad rush’ and running out of food, and cold food is partly how the buffet is managed and run, and how orderly it is for guests to be called by table.
We had a Christmas party where the caterer said this amount of food for this amount of people, and it was a caterer they were not familiar with. Buffet style and ran out of food before more than 20 people even got to the line. It was at a place that uses various catering (has a cater style kitchen only). Since then, the party has been at reliable places - with more recent plated food (with dessert table) but have also had buffet food w/o a problem.
My daughter did not want just place cards. So…I collected small stemmed cordial glasses, all clear cut glass, a lot of different kinds. I wrote each guests name on the cordial glass with a wine marker. If there was a couple, they got two of the same glass. Many guests took them home. And the wait staff asked if they could have any extras that were left.
My DD also didn’t want a traditional guest book, but she wanted a guest book. So she asked me to look for a world atlas. I found a beautiful National Geographic one. Guests found pages of places where they had been and wrote great comments about the places.
Unless times have changed, back when I was working in event planning, and even when we were planning our own wedding, buffets were usually more expensive than served meals b/c caterers usually had to prepare more food than for plated meals (people usually take larger servings at buffets). Perhaps it’s different now as maybe it’s more costly to pay for servers at sit down dinners, but I’ve never assumed people who chose buffets were attempting to save money.
It always depends on the circumstances (for instance prime rib on a buffet can’t be cheap!).
But it’s not even about the money. I get the impression from some comments here (over the years - this thread is 10
Years old as I started it and my S and DIL will have their 10th anniversary in a couple months! ) that they think of buffets as lesser or not as fru-fru.
I do agree with you that people think buffets feel “cheaper” which, I think they are definitely less formal in practice, like having to line up and dish out your own plate, but usually from a monetary/budget standpoint, they are often actually more expensive. That was all I meant by my initial post. I personally prefer a sit down meal myself
If there are many infirm or handicapped folks involved, plated can be easier as no one has to make a plate for another. Since covid, many places around here have difficulty having sufficient wait staff and there seems to be an increase in buffets.
My nephew’s wedding was seated, but the food was served family style. Honestly, it was a little hard as the platters were heavy and hard to pass with all the glasses and candles and other stuff in the middle, and I was recovering from surgery so couldn’t really hold the platters when they were full. I think the salad was plated but you had to finish it or sacrifice it to make room for the dinner plate.
I’m not sure what my friend will do for her son’s wedding this fall but probably plated as several of their guests will be in wheelchairs and a buffet would be difficult. There aren’t many older relatives (no grandparents), but plenty of us with balance and hand strength issues. I do know all the food will be gluten free and kosher.
I think we are going to see more buffets. That way people with specific diet/food preference can load up on what they want. (Of course celiac guests may still have concerns. Our DIL is celiac, an that wedding’s entire plated dinner was strictly GF. My GF sister really enjoyed that meal. One of the entree choices was vegetarian.)
We went to two very nice buffets…both had the guy carving the beef. And in both cases, there were servers for all of the foods. The guests were not serving themselves from the buffet.
Our DD had a plated dinner at her wedding reception, but the welcome party, and brunch the following day were both buffet.
All the more reason to keep table decor and accessories to a minimum! Tables with lots of stuff look beautiful and “woo!” worthy for a about a minute. By the time people have a couple beverage glasses each on the table, their purse or clutch, phones, appetizer plates, etc….all those things making the table pretty get lost.
Even with the decorations being minimal (I think there were just three small candles, and I only remember them because when it got dark, they needed them for the cake cutting which was just behind our table). There was a ton of food and it needed to go somewhere! There were at least 2 different veggies and beef and chicken. Delicious.
Another problem was that this was outside, under a tent. The chairs were really low so it was hard to pass stuff.
My daughter had a buffet cocktail hour with tons of food, then servers brought entrees selected by the guests: fish, prime rib, and vegetarian.
As far as I can recall, they had a bunch of little paper tents with table numbers, and bride, groom and attendants sat at a table up front. Great food all around.
At our family style dinner, the serving plates were very manageable, enough to generously serve four people each, and there were plenty of them. And the caterer quickly replaced the empty plates with full ones until the full stayed almost full. So no awkward passing of heavy dishes at all! The caterer has worked with the venue for ages and knew the tricks to make everything smoothly flowing. I was very impressed!
I went to my first family-style service wedding dinner last year and I loved it! It seemed like the best of both worlds to me: I didn’t have to get up and stand on line, yet I was able to serve myself as much or as little of an individual food as I liked.
I’ve rarely been to a reception/meal that was “family style,” other than chinese multi-course meals with lazy susan’s. Generally at those events, one or more people will offer to help serve folks so platters don’t have to be passed. Maybe there are regional differences. I know bucco de beppo was family style. They’ve give out of business here on Oahu.
One of the big upscale restaurant group here has an event venue. They serve family style at events. They put 2 platters of each dish on the tables so none are too heavy. The flowers at the table are often set out on elevated canopy above the tables so there’s room for the platters. The food is delicious!
