Wedding Food

The Wedding Breakfast and Buffet

The wedding food depends on the type of wedding you are having. A very informal wedding may only have a finger buffet while a more formal wedding could have silver service, and everything in between!

The type of wedding food you have is entirely up to you and dependent on your budget.

Many venues will offer their own catering, especially if you’re getting married at a hotel. In my experience, I’ve found the hotel food quite affordable, although this is not always the case.

Some venues will not allow you to use outside caterers. Check with your venue before booking.

The Speeches

The Speeches

H2b and I were talking about the speeches and he dared to joke about them. He joked (I hope) that he was going to stand up and say, ‘Doesn’t my wife look beautiful?’ and then sit down. There are certain things that it might be a good idea to appear in the speeches, and although h2b was joking (I hope) here’s some top tips on what to contain in your speech.

Who Goes First?
Now, you could have whatever you want for your wedding, what I’m going to type here is the traditional way of things in your average British wedding.

The father of the bride goes first. As the host of the wedding (traditionally) it’s his job to introduce the new couple as Mr and Mrs. He may tell a few stories about the bride as a young girl, how proud he is now and how he knew h2b was the man for his little girl. Typically, the father of the bride introduces the new Mr and Mrs.

Next up is the groom. He thanks the father of the bride for introducing them and for anything else he may have said that was nice. Then the groom proceeds to thank the bridesmaids for being gorgeous, the groomsmen  and ushers for being so helpful, any guests who have travelled far or put in some special effort for the wedding, he hands out any gifts that need to be handed out. And finally, or maybe firstly, he thanks his new wife for being so beautiful on this wedding day, for making him the happiest man alive, for actually agreeing to marry him and for many other things that he should be thanking her for.

Finally, it’s the best man’s turn. He thanks the groom on behalf of the bridesmaids for saying they’re gorgeous, he thanks the groom on behalf of the groomsmen and ushers for saying they were helpful. Then he proceeds to take the Mickey out of the groom, revealing singledom antics that no one needed to hear but are hilarious none the less!

My Advice
More recently, brides have started making speeches and in addition to a best man, a best woman has made a speech. It’s entirely up to you what you’d like to do. Just remember, if you do your speeches before your meal, your guests will be getting hungry! If you do them after your meal, remember some people might be busting for the loo. Don’t make your speeches too long.

I was thinking of doing a very short speech in Chinese thanking the guests from abroad for travelling so far. I know how to do it in slang Chinese but I’d have to ask someone to teach me how to say it properly. I think my guests would appreciate that effort, and I’d keep it short as to not alienate the guests who don’t speak Chinese.

Useful Links
If you’re stuck for ideas, the ever helpful world wide web has a few useful websites. Here are some of the best:

• Hitched.co.uk – the ever helpful hitched gives advice on how to present your speech as well as some useful sample speeches.
• Charge Your Glass – this website offers free help to those nervous grooms, best men and fathers of the bride who need a bit of help creating their speech
• Confetti – I always recommend Confetti because I think they’re brilliant. Have a read of their useful advice on wedding speeches
• How to Write Wedding Speeches and Toasts: Everything You Need to Build a Successful Speech – have a look on Amazon at this book, it looks good! I bought the Confetti speech writing book, they are all much of a muchness in my opinion.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment so that I can get back to you as quickly as possible.

Chat with our Coordinator

One year, one month, 19 days to go!

Had a really really really good day today!! We went to our wedding venue and had a chat with our wedding coordinator. With just under 14 months to go, you might be thinking why are we going to the venue to sort things. We have plenty of time to do that, and with so much time to spare we might change our minds.

The reason is, we want to get our invitations made. We’re sending invites to our local guests in September but we’re sending invites to our guests abroad in July, to give them time to book tickets and things. This means we need to book our invites over Easter as I’m not sure how long it will take the invite making lady to make them, and we have to book a slot. So, if you work it backwards, seeing our wedding coordinator in February half term isn’t so bad!

We had a really good chat and he answered heaps of our questions. We went through the wedding top to bottom.

The church ceremony is starting at 12:00pm, finishing at roughly at 1-ish and getting to our venue for about … well we agreed at about 2pm including time for photos and travelling. It could be as late as 2:20 though… Then we’d have our photos and the sit down dinner, or wedding breakfast, would begin with a receiving line (mum and dad’s idea!) and dinner beginning about 4:15. The speeches to be at the end of the meal (sorry dad, h2b and best man!) followed by the evening do, which will start at 7:30, the first dance appearing at 8:30!

The coordinator also let us know about when our suppliers would be able to deliver the cake and the table flowers. He asked us about our chair covers which I thought I’d sorted but hadn’t booked yet, so that’s got me to think about that! I was thinking of going with posh frocks for chairs. More about that later… If there isn’t another function booked in the day before our wedding, our suppliers could deliver our things on the Wednesday before the wedding, however if there is a function the day before ours they can deliver from 5am the day of our wedding, which is fair enough. However, they recommend that the florist delivers the day of the wedding, but that’s obvious really. No one wants droopy flowers!

We talked about the speeches as well, putting h2b and Dad under pressure there. I think the ‘s’ word is something they don’t want to hear for a long time yet! H2b even dared to joke about how short his speech would be… We do not joke about the wedding!

We talked about wedding DJ’s as we haven’t sorted that out either, and we talked about the men’s suits as that also hasn’t been sorted. Actually… looking at my to do list, lots hasn’t been done!

Our coordinator asked us about the food we’re thinking of having. We’re fairly sure about the starters, we discussed the main options. We talked about the puddings too, and we’re all having lots of good ideas!

It was really exciting talking to the coordinator. I know our wedding is ages away but it was really useful to get timing and advice and all sorts from someone who not only knows how weddings work at our venue but also has vast experience of the wedding industry as a whole. Peter is so professional and friendly, I feel like our wedding is in good hands!