You’ve fed everybody canapés, you’ve served them a beautiful Wedding Breakfast, and they’ve had dessert.
Potentially rather a lot of wine, too.
Surely nobody is going to need feeding again? Right?
Give them a few hours of drinking, dancing and enthusiastically throwing themselves around to Mr Brightside and you may be surprised!
Evening food is one of those parts of a wedding that can feel completely unnecessary when you’re sitting at home planning the day.
And then 8 pm arrives and suddenly a room full of extremely hungry people appear from nowhere, because your evening guests
So, do you need evening food at a wedding?
We’d say yes in most cases!
But how much you need, when you serve it, and what you actually offer will depend very much on how your day is planned.
Don’t Forget Your Evening Guests
Wedding days are long, longer than you might think.
Your guests might arrive around lunchtime and still be dancing ten or eleven hours later, and even if you’ve served a generous meal during the afternoon, several hours may have passed by the time the evening celebrations are properly underway.
There’s also a surprisingly simple equation at work here: Dancing + drinking + several hours = hungry wedding guests. We’ve seen it enough times over the years to know that evening food tends to disappear incredibly quickly.
And somehow, the person who insisted they were “still absolutely stuffed from dinner” is often the same person you see returning for their second helping an hour later.
Some of your guests might not have been there during the daytime, which means that if you’re inviting extra friends, colleagues or extended family to join you for the evening reception, then the evening food may be their only experience of your wedding catering.
You’ve invited those people to celebrate with you, so offering them something delicious to eat is a lovely way of making them feel included in the day.
If your Wedding Breakfast finishes quite late and your evening food follows shortly afterwards, you probably won’t need as much.
If you eat relatively early and the party continues until midnight, that’s a very different situation. The number of evening-only guests matters too, as does the overall pace of the day.
As a general guide, evening food might need to cater for somewhere between around 70 and 100 per cent of your guests depending on timings, drinking and the structure of the wedding.
And naturally, we always like to have a bit of a buffer.
Weddings feel much better when food feels generous rather than when somebody is guarding the final slice of pizza crumpet like it’s the Crown Jewels.
What Food Works Best In The Evening?
Our biggest piece of advice is to keep it simple. By this stage of the wedding, nobody wants another formal three-course meal.
People are dancing, chatting and wandering between the bar and the dancefloor – they might have taken their shoes off or started wearing their tie on their head.
You’ve seen it all before!
The best evening food is therefore usually something warm, delicious and easy to grab, whether it’s burgers, loaded fries, fish and chips, tacos or anything that involves melted cheese, really. That’s a winner.
Food stations and outdoor cooking can work beautifully at barn and marquee weddings too because they naturally become part of the evening atmosphere.
The idea is to give people something satisfying without interrupting the party.
There isn’t one perfect time to start serving evening food, though because it depends on when you ate your Wedding Breakfast and how the rest of your evening is structured.
You want to leave enough time that people are genuinely ready to eat again, but not wait so long that half your guests are hovering around hopefully asking when the food is coming out.
For many weddings, somewhere later in the evening works naturally, once the formal parts of the day are over and everybody has properly settled into the party.
Your caterer will help you think about the timings as part of the wider flow of the day.
Should Evening Food Match Your Wedding Breakfast?
It doesn’t have to, but it can.
Evening food is a lovely opportunity to do something completely different if you fancy, whether that’s elegant plated wedding breakfast, then pizza later on or anything else.
There are no rules saying the two parts of your catering need to feel identical.
If you’re wondering whether it’s worth it, then we’d say absolutely. Not because you need to keep piling food in front of people all day long, but because it can make a significant difference to the experience of your guests.
It keeps the party going and gives all of your evening guests (plus those with you for the long haul) something to enjoy, and maybe even have a few minutes to rest, refuel and get back on the dancefloor!
At Kemp & Kemp, we always want food to feel generous, welcoming and completely connected to the atmosphere you’re trying to create.
FAQs
Do you really need evening food at a wedding?
In most cases, we’d recommend it, particularly if there is a long gap between the Wedding Breakfast and the end of the evening.
How much evening food do you need?
It can vary considerably, but catering for around 70 – 100% of guests can be sensible depending on timings, how many evening guests you have and the structure of your day.
What is the best evening food for a wedding?
Food that is warm, satisfying and easy to eat tends to work brilliantly. Pizza, burgers, loaded fries, tacos and fish and chips are all popular options.
What time should wedding evening food be served?
There’s no single perfect time. It depends on when your Wedding Breakfast finishes and how late your evening celebration runs.
Do evening guests need to be catered for?
We think so. If they haven’t attended the Wedding Breakfast, the evening food may be their only experience of your wedding catering.
If you want to talk through some options for your wedding, drop us an email on info@kempandkempcatering.co.uk and we’ll discuss how we can make your food dreams a reality.
