The after ceremony meal

I've been to a few weddings where the couple have skipped the sit down meal and gone straight to the evening and it worked perfectly well. I think it's a matter of personal choice. It's your day, your money and therefore your choice x

Unless your wedding is late enough that people could have their evening meal before attending, you need to feed them. It doesn’t have to be a big fancy sit down meal, but there needs to be something

It depends what time your ceremony is but even if it is late like 4 or 5pm then you have dancing and drinks you are going to have to feed people something if your evening goes on to 10pm or later. As others have said it can be as informal as you like. You could have a ceremony then drinks and dancing but serve buffet food or hire a food truck for later when people will have been partying for a few hours. I don’t think it’s feasible to serve no food at all though.

View quoted message We're having an evening buffet laid out, it's just the actual wedding meal that we don't want but everyone is saying that were being unreasonable because we don't want the meal

Dont think it is unreasonable, not everyones wedding has to be the same. Depending how late your doing the buffet you could have snacks/nibbles or something small on a table for people to help themselves to. Just so no one gets hungry. What reason is it they think you should have it?

Hi
I am not having a 3 course meal as our wedding Meal as my partner struggles to eat due to an illness so we are having a hog roast which is better for us and we aren't having any evening food at all just a deserts table

View quoted message

So you are actually feeding people with an evening buffet. In that case so long as your wedding is later - say 4 or 5 you should be ok as you would not even have time to fit a "sit down" meal anyway.

A 4pm wedding followed by 1.5 hours of photos and drinks and mingling would be 4.30 ceremony finished + 1.5h would be 6pm.

I have shot weddings like this and are known as twilight weddings that go straight into the evening. So I would suggest that you could bring your evening buffet forward to 6.30 and then a first dance and party time can kick off about 8pm

Doing it like that should keep those that say you are being ridiculous happy and at the same time keeping it informal.

I think its fine maybe have a little buffet for after x💗

You do what you want this is your day. If you start doing what others want you will enjoy it far less.

It’s your day! You guys do exactly what you want! It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I think it would just be an idea to have some snacks organised or maybe a BBQ or something?! That way people are still fed without the formal sit down meal

As long as people are being fed (which they will be, by your buffet) then of course you don't need to have a sit down meal.

If you think some people might be seriously uncomfortable with it, then just make it clear in the invites what you are doing.

I've been to weddings much earlier than yours where I really couldn't face anything from the evening buffet because I was still so full from the formal meal, so it's crazy to think that people will want two meals with a wedding starting as late as yours.

We are getting married at 2:30pm with a couple of hours to toast and have photos taken
We are then travelling up the road to reception and having a one course roast dinner as we are having a buffet at 8:30pm.
The only reason we went for a 1 course sit down meal is because it would be 6 hours from ceromony to buffet. We also didn’t choose a 2 or 3 course because of the buffet.If we had a ceremony at 4:30pm / 5pm then I would skip the sit down meal completely and just have the buffet come out at 8:30pm. You are not unreasonable for not having a sit down meal if you only have a couple or maybe 3 hours between ceromony and buffet. You could even just spend say £20 on nibbles like peanuts breadsticks etc for toast drinks after ceremony which is what we are also doing