Wedding breakfast buffet - queue solution?

Sounds like a good plan, but you will need to factor in if any extra staff will be needed to have multiple buffet tables - a recent wedding that we went to had staff serving the meats etc.

Also, make sure that whoever is running the buffet knows what they are doing and what the bride and groom are requesting. We have been to a few weddings where the bride and groom have said that children can go first, but they were sent away again because the bride and groom hadn't been served. You may find that even if you are wanting everyone to go up at the same time as you, you will need to communicate this well to the caterers (hope that makes some vague sense!)

Hi thanks for the feedback.

Should have said - the caterers are my dads cousin! He's a professional chef and regularly caters weddings.

Will have to think about letting kids go first but I think i'll just let them queue with their parents - there will be quite a lot of them. I will probably have a smaller buffet table just for the top table - I'm greedy I don't like waiting for food?

I have been to 2 weddings with buffet serving.

One had a room dedicated for it and worked quite well, one table for salads and sides, and one table for mains. It went well, and as the wedding was a small one, it didn't take too long.

For another wedding (a bit bigger) they only had one buffet and they did a thing where each table was called to serve themselves. Personally, I don't think it worked. The canapes were served much earlier (and not plenty) and we were starving. Seeing everyone getting up and passing us to the buffet (we were the closest table to it) was torture and when the time came to self serve, the potatoes and veggies were gone, we had to start before they could bring the top ups.

Your idea of having 3-4 buffets around the room is by far the best one, and I don't know why more people don't do it

Cheerio!

Another idea is to serve the food on smaller platters and put one on each table for people to help themselves.

You've had some good suggestions but particularly Foo's about putting serving platters on each table.

I went to a buffet wedding on Saturday - 170 people with not enough seats for all! However, it worked quite well as the hosts told everyone buffet food being replenished all night so nobody tended to rush and you never got a queue of more than say 5 people.

I haven't seen it done, but it sounds like a brilliant solution. Went to a wedding of 150 people with a buffet, and it took so long to send everyone up for their food they ran so late. Our table was actually moved out if the way for the DJ while we were eating! Anyway, a great idea we saw at a wedding last year was as someone else said, was to put platters on each table. It was a lovely way to meet people on your table too!

You've had some good suggestions but particularly Foo's about putting serving platters on each table.

I went to a buffet wedding on Saturday - 170 people with not enough seats for all! However, it worked quite well as the hosts told everyone buffet food being replenished all night so nobody tended to rush and you never got a queue of more than say 5 people.

We are having a buffet and will probably send each table up at a time. I know this can take a while but I'm going to mention to the caterers that we want it to be as speedy as possible and hopefully having a few guys serving so it'll go quicker. My friend did this at her wedding and all the tables got served pretty quickly.

Thanks guys - I'm feeling reassured.

sorry for not quoting people - haven't worked out how to do it yet. but I hope I've managed to respond to everyone below.

Would love to put the dishes on each table but there is going to be a massive variety so not enough space. We are as I mentioned putting cheese platters on each table later on.

I don't think we'll be having servers - sometimes this makes things slower in my experience. We will be making sure all dishes are clearly labelled. I went to a conference where each table was called individually at lunch, the food was cold by the time I got there! Although this didn't really matter as all the vegetarian food had gone so I couldn't eat it anyway! I may do a separate veggie table as one of my frustrations is that meat eaters always seem to think 'ooh that looks nice' and take the veggie food aswell as the meat.?

We are having 150-200 guests so this would be a major problem if we only had one table.

There will definitely be enough seats for everyone because as I mentioned in my original post there will still be a seating plan.

I think we may just do one dessert table though - haven't thought this through yet.