Late-night snacks and oyster bars: How couples are switching up the wedding breakfast
Selection To Centrepieces Enormous Are There Menu Multiple A Stations With Treat Grazing For Of Choices, Plenty Cake From Ways Your To Down Go
The traditional wedding breakfast has long been regarded as one of the most important events of any wedding day. Often that importance is equated with formality, something that has fast gone out of fashion with many other aspects of celebration, but food and drinks remain stuck in a time warp.
Switching up as many aspects of the wedding breakfast as possible is the number one way couples can put their highly personalised mark on their special day. Tapping into zeitgeists such as ‘farm to fork’ and ‘zero waste’ is one such example, but also trends for no- and low-alcohol, experiential eating, snacking and personalisation are all in the mix.
But what might these concepts look and taste like in reality? Let’s dive in…
Placing storytelling at the centre of the entire food and drink experience at weddings means every morsel tasted and sip supped is highly curated and selected by the couple to paint a personalised picture of their journey from first date to ‘I do’. Maybe it was a memorable picnic or first fancy meal together, a shared cocktail on a first date, or toasting with the same fizz popped to celebrate the proposal.
The fine dining-style of a fully plated and served meal at big tables is increasingly giving way to more informal styles. From making the whole event a stand-up cocktail party-like affair to moving around using multiple spaces for different elements of the meal to emphasise a journey, being highly social is the aim of the game. A combination of informal and formal works well when there is a wide age demographic in your wedding party – not everyone is happy to stand up for hours on end.
As settings lean toward the informal, where seating is still wanted even this is getting a switch up for a more relaxed ambience. Smaller tables make convivial and inclusive conversation easier, while figure of eight settings make use of different angles around the table to increase opportunities for conversation and sharing food. These are more social than when seated at long or big round tables, which often restrict conversation to the person beside you.
Changing up how to seat your guests (or not) means rethinking how to plate and serve your food. Impressive grazing tables full of intricately displayed charcuterie, cheese, smoked and cooked fish and meats, fruits, salads, breads and dips are a thoroughly modern spin on the buffet table! Add to that circulating platters of canape-style hors d'oeuvres and dessert tables with generous selection of smaller bite sized cakes and desserts plays into snacking culture.
Let’s face it, wedding days are long drawn out affairs and judging how much to drink can be tricky. Get it wrong, and you could be the person sliding across the dancefloor at 9pm with a tie around the head. But with such great low- and no-alcohol options out there, from great tasting 0% beers and spirits to hydrating kombucha and kefir, even craft cordials, tonics and spritzers, offering guests low- and no-alcohol options at the pre-dinner gathering and keeping them on the menu all night long is a great way for guests to enjoy the whole experience with zero regrets the morning after!
Best suited to smaller wedding breakfast gatherings is the option to match the food menu with great quality drinks. Drinks pairing doesn’t just have to be alcohol of course; there are incredible options out there for low- and no-alcohol, even cold-brew tea pairings, and in the right hands can truly elevate and make memorable the wedding breakfast experience.
Adding to the sense of storytelling, providing an experience for guests dining at your wedding breakfast can be a great memory maker. My favourite experience is mobile oyster bars. Ireland is amid a love affair with oyster eating. Professional shuckers can be hired to shuck on demand and select oysters from different places around Ireland for a specific flavour profile, then create garnishes for guests to personalise to their own taste.
There are several venues around the country that offer a wedding breakfast with a strong farm to fork ethos. Located in estates with strong farming heritage, everything on the menu can be sourced directly from the farm or within a small radius. If storytelling is important to your wedding day, the story of where the food has come from for your meal will be important too.
Venues are becoming more aware of the bad optic of wasteful food practices and now offer ways to produce a wonderful celebratory menu that is as close to minimal or zero waste as possible. This might look like pre-ordering meals in advance or working with chefs to select a core range of ingredients and get creative in how they can reappear in different guises throughout the meal to ensure everything is used and nothing wasted.
From enormous cake centrepieces that adorn a long table for the duration of a meal, to dome-shaped cakes, cake grazing stations with multiple choices, to the interactive table-plating of desserts for guests to scoop up their own serving, it seems cakes and desserts must work that bit harder to get the guests attention at the end of the meal!
There’s no way we can get through the night without some additional sustenance, and I wonder if the late evening snacks are really everyone’s favourite wedding food! The most fun option is for the couple to draught in their favourite food truck – who wouldn’t go wild for a perfect fish taco, some Korean Fried Chicken, BBQ slider or vegan-friendly bánh mì? Maybe crepes or loaded Belgian waffles from a mobile creperie, or some soft whip from an old school ice cream van. And reignite the party with a mixologist slinging expert cocktails from a mobile bar.