BAD/ABSENT Wedding Reception Food

[barbeml]

Inspired by a post in missypie's traumatic party thread, because I cannot get the vision out of my head of a wedding reception "spread" consisting of a bowl of punch and a dinner-sized plate of apple slices and a dinner-sized plate of Wheat Thins, what was the worst/most inadequate wedding reception food you've ever had?

 

[SpecialK]

As much as I hate to say it - it was at my own wedding! It was embarassingly bad. I found out afterward that the kitchen was also 10 plates short so one table was not served their dinners until the rest of us were on dessert. Luckily, it was a table of my girlfriends and their SOs who made the best of it. (I'm sure the open bar didn't hurt...) One of the guys went to the hotel gift shop and bought pretzels. We still laugh about it!

 

[Saphire]

Hey, SpecialK, at least they ate, just a bit late. Leaving hungry is never a good thing, and something guests will always remember. But the worst wedding faux pas I witnessed was when the bride asked her guests to supply the food, as in everyone bring a dish. Family, ok, I can understand that...but she asked her co-workers! (Country club wedding, Caribbean honeymoon) I sent a gift and had a prior committment that day.

 

[NikiM20]

Hey, SpecialK, at least they ate, just a bit late. Leaving hungry is never a good thing, and something guests will always remember. But the worst wedding faux pas I witnessed was when the bride asked her guests to supply the food, as in everyone bring a dish. Family, ok, I can understand that...but she asked her co-workers! (Country club wedding, Caribbean honeymoon) I sent a gift and had a prior committment that day.

Well I heard of a wedding once where the "main" course was double cheeseburgers from McDonalds......Thank Goodness I wasnt at that one, although DD would have been in heaven

 

[Poohnatic]

The worst reception I went to we didn't even get to eat. I'm pretty sure I've told the tale here:

Bride and Groom easily spent 3 grand on dress, flowers for the church and invites. Reception was at the local Red Man (a/k/a Redneck) Club. There were about 20 folding tables set up, in four rows. About 100 people. At one end of the room, two tables are set up with three trays of cut up wonder bread sandwiches, two bowls each of chips and pretzels-for 100 people. A very pretty fountain with punch-but no cups.

Ex husband and I were there for over two hours, watched the couple smash cake in each others faces and the bride sang (poorly) to her groom-no food was served. It was all covered in plastic wrap and any time someone went near it, the lovely ladies of the Red Man club's kitchen would YELL at whoever was trying to open a package.

Very weird. We left and went and got lunch somewhere else.

I went to a wedding in March that wasn't quite as bad, however, if you invite people to a 6pm wedding, you feed them DINNER, not just appetizers.

Suzanne

 

[mrsheppo]

Went to a wedding reception that was catered with submarine sandwiches. Everyone got one 3" inch sandwich and potato chips and a can of soda. No cake was served until 4 hours into the reception. Didn't stay long enough to get a piece.

Stopped for Chinese take out on the way home.

 

[tink_n_pooh]

One of my childhood friends got married a few years ago. Her reception was at a fire house and the fire dept auxillary catered everything. I don't think there were any appetizers. They had a bar, I think they were serving some mixed drinks, one type of beer and store brand soda out of bottles. Dinner was served cafeteria style (get off your butt and get it yourself on a big long line in the kitchen). We had turkey and mashed potatos served from a huge ice cream scoop. Dinner was served on plastic or paper plates too. Oh, and my favorite part was the baskets of wonder bread on the tables

My DB's wedding feast wasn't anything exciting either. They ran out of appetizers (which we just cheese and ritz crackers) long before the bridal party get there. The dinner was a buffet of semi cold baked ziti, limp salad out of a bag, and rolled up roast beef lunch meat. I don't even know if everyone ate. I think the cake was good but I never even got a piece. Oh, and the bar wouldn't serve a slew a mixed drinks

 

[Lisa L from MI]

Well this isn't really "bad or absent" food but we went to DH's cousins wedding quite a few years back at a very nice "yacht club".....I am not at all a big eater. Their dinners were served to the table "plate style". Can't remember exactly what we got but not even enough to even fill me up a little....I was STARVED as well as DH!!! I think we hit the drive thru at McDonalds on the way home...LOL!!

 

[sha_lyn]

Went to a wedding reception that was catered with submarine sandwiches. Everyone got one 3" inch sandwich and potato chips and a can of soda. No cake was served until 4 hours into the reception. Didn't stay long enough to get a piece.

Stopped for Chinese take out on the way home.

other than the late cake, it sounds like nephews reception. I found it odd they sent out nice invitations all over the country, to a wedding that amounted to not much more than an elopement. We traveled 1/2 across the country to attend. However I now know they had very little money to spend. Entire wedding (including dresses and suits) probably cost $500 max.

 

[SwedishMeatball]

 

[janey99]

One of my roommates in college actually had a keg party wedding reception that they charged everyone 20$ to attend - all the beer you could drink and a few giant sub sandwiches and some plates of brownies made by the mother of the bride (remove the tinfoil yourself if you want one!).

All the roomates came 1 day early to help the bride "set up" the hall - about 30 folding tables and 100 folding chairs. When the reception started, we headed over to the keg to quench our thirst from sweating all day and a friend of the groom's said "wait - did you guys pay yet?!"

These were not financially challenged people!

Somehow, we just lost touch with each other after that

 

[jedi_librarian]

For my stepdad's first marriage, the guests all got food poisoning from the reception!

 

[Caradana]

Getting married in 10 days and I have a new appreciation for our menu.

 

[btass]

My brothers reception dinner consisted of Baked Beans in huge bowls on the tables with a side of baked ham.

For desert there was a huge bowl of M&M's on the table and a cake.

I got yelled at for bringing a Vodka & Soda inside the hall from the bar our Dad had set up in the parking lot in the back of his truck! "There is no liquor allowed in here!!!!" "Ahhh, she has liqour in that glass!"

Our 87 year old Grandmother and two cousins came all the way from England for that one!

 

[C.Ann]

A friend was telling me about a wedding reception she attended and she had me laughing so hard, I was crying.. Not so much because of what was offered (hey - some folks just have to "make do") - but the wayshe told it was hilarious..

Seems it was an "at home-in-the-house-kinda-in-the-yard" affair and the kitchen table was piled high with cheese pizzas from Pizza Hut (the main course) - donut holes from Dunkin' donuts (the dessert) - and the bathtub was chock full of ice and cans of Coor's beer (the onlybeverage available.. She said she kept waiting for "Pa" to announce that he was "headed down to the lower forty to ketchum' a possum", but instead he turned to his younger daughter and said, "Sugar, when you get hitched we're goin' all out! Next time there ain't gonna be no Coors.. We're gonna have Bud!!! Nuttin' but the best for my little girl.."

Every time I think of her telling that story I get into a fit of laughter..

 

[aprilgail2]

I went to a relatives wedding in Virginia and all they had were these gross little finger type sandwiches, we had to find a drive through fast food place as soon as it was over, we were all so hungry! We went there a little hungry thinking it would be like a Long Island wedding, cocktail hour,carving station and pasta stations, dinner and dessert and it was SO not like that. It was like punch and finger sandwiches-I have never been to a wedding like that before that and have not since thank goodness!

 

[Barb D]

Well, mine was cake, punch, nuts and mints in the church basement. The wedding was at 1 in the afternoon -- after lunch time and well before dinner -- so I hope nobody was expecting a meal. We were broke (just out of college) and so were my parents (no pay for several years while trying to start a business.) This was 25 years ago, so if anybody was offended then, perhaps they've forgotten by now. Or perhaps not.

ETA: My dress was on clearance, the bridesmaids dresses were off-the-rack from JC Penney, and we got married on the day before Easter in part so that we could use the church's Easter Lilies as some of the flowers. We really were broke.

 

[C.Ann]

Well, mine was cake, punch, nuts and mints in the church basement. The wedding was at 1 in the afternoon -- after lunch time and well before dinner -- so I hope nobody was expecting a meal. We were broke (just out of college) and so were my parents (no pay for several years while trying to start a business.) This was 25 years ago, so if anybody was offended then, perhaps they've forgotten by now. Or perhaps not.

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Extremely elegant wedding receptions often consist of no more than champagne and wedding cake - so I'm sure yours was fine..

 

[barkley]

since it was the wedding i attended that inspired this thread i have to share-at least it was better than 'the reception that never was'

had a co-worker whose wedding was schedualed for 5 pm (in a location that the bulk of the guests-her co-workers, had to plan because of traffic to leave home an hour or two before the ceremony to travel to), and at 6:40 the guests were all still sitting in the church waiting for it to begin
finaly at close to 7:30 pm the wedding began! the wedding service lasted for over 2 1/2 hours (the bride and groom gave verbal 'tributes' to family members, friends, people they had encountered during their life times, bride 'sang' to the groom, groom 'sang to the bride'; at least 4 of the 12 (each) attendants on each side did 'singing' tributes to the bride and groom .....) and then.....the pastor announced that while the guests were invited to proceed to the reception-the event would not 'begin' until the bride, groom and the wedding party did all of the formal portraits at the church, the brides home and other locations they had chosen because they were 'running late' .

the bride when she returned to work following her honeymoon a couple of weeks later was verbaly angry and shocked that of the 150 plus guests that she invited and had rsvp'd to attend the reception only her immediate family and the bridal party (and not all of them) to the tune of about 25 showed for the catered reception which finaly started at 11:30 p.m. with the food served at around 1 a.m.-after all she had to do her formal entrance and receiving line (her position was 'weddings never run on time-whats 4 or 5 hours more or less?'

 

[MyGoofy26]

My cousin got married a couple months ago and when my mom and aunt came home they were about in tears telling me about dinner. It was all homemade food. The groom's mom thinks she's a pastry chef, so she made the cake and apparently their names were written all over the cake pretty sloppily. People were trying to hide the cake under napkins after the first bad bite. On each table was a tub of Country Crock. I guess there was another reception next door and someone accidentally wandered in, eyes got huge from shock and they turned and ran out.