When was the last time you had a delicious meal at a wedding reception? Never, probably, unless the father of the bride happened to be Thomas Keller, or the guest list was limited to the bride, the groom, and five of their closest friends.
Regina Schrambling deconstructs the wedding banquet for Slate’s wedding issue in a piece titled “Soulless Food.” She posits a number of factors that lead to the dearth of good wedding food, from venues that hold the bride and groom hostage to their in-house caterers to cost-cutting on the part of the happy couple.
But who cares about why the food is bad? We’re just here for Schrambling’s entertaining takes on the the foibles of today’s wife-to-be:
Brides who will obsess for months on the color of the candles inevitably go all Stouffer’s when it comes to what will be laid out on their rented china.
Girls who spend their whole lives dreaming of being brides see everything around them as an accessory. Flowers enhance their beauty. Food, not so much.
Maybe we should all just elope.
Not necessarily so: Five years ago, we decided to keep our reception small (but 50 people, not your hypothetical 5) for just this reason. We chose a venue that had an affiliated restaurant (which we liked) didn’t offer multiple entree choices, except for the two people we knew were vegetarians, to keep costs down. People still rave about our wedding dinner (and the cake, too. :) ).
I’m still hearing about our reception. I vowed to spend a good part of the budget on the food and make it good. We catered for 200, and designed a menu to suit our own tastes.
for cocktail hour we served home-brewed beer (7 beers on tap) and big fresh baked pretzels and had a big cheese station. For dinner, I did a buffet with gourmet sausages, poached salmon, jack daniels glazed butternut squash, grilled veggies and salad. It was all served with artisan rools. We offered more beer and red and white wine (our favorite local winery)
the pretzels were good, inexpensive, and unique. the beer was fabulous-all made by friends. The caterer did a great job of making the food really stand out!
We kept our guest list under 80 people and had amazing food.
Sage and Onion in Santa Barbara catered it. I think restaurants know how to deal with a rush much more than caterers. In the end most “catered” weddings have terrible food.
Maybe in my case, food was my main priority not stupid bride crap