A festival wedding is not a cheaper wedding. It is a differently shaped one, and the catering has to change shape with it.

What actually changes

At a seated wedding everybody eats at once and the whole day pivots on that moment. At a festival wedding people eat when they are hungry, in twos and threes, across four or five hours.

That is harder, not easier. It means holding quality over a long service rather than a single push, and it means the kitchen is working from noon until midnight instead of for ninety minutes.

It is also better fun, and the room never has to be called to order.

What to serve

Street food is the heart of it. Lebanese lamb with pomegranate and tzatziki, bang bang chicken, BBQ jackfruit, loaded chips, mac and cheese, and a set of rosemary fries with Swiss cheese and pickled onions that people come back for.

Then a sharing table if you want one moment where everybody does sit down, and a barbecue if the weather is with you.

Late on, fish and chips in newspaper cones and churros with salted caramel.

Tipis, and the ground under them

Tipis and sailcloth are what most festival weddings use, and they go up on ground that has nothing on it — which is our normal starting point rather than a complication. We arrive with the whole kitchen: gas ovens and burners, our refrigerated van, our own water, wash-up and waste.

We work regularly with Events Under Canvas, Chelmer Marquees, Anglia Coastal Marquees and Great Events, and we would rather speak to yours directly than through you. See marquee wedding catering.

The honest part

Two things people underestimate.

Rain. A festival wedding lives outdoors, so the wet-weather plan matters more here than anywhere. Written, agreed with you and the marquee company, with a named decision time on the morning.

Numbers. Food served across five hours is easier to under-order than food served at one o’clock, because nobody sees the queue building. We would rather work the real number out with you than guess high and charge you for it.

Next

See all six wedding menus, or what is included and how booking works.

Menus

A festival-style day wants food people can carry, eat standing, and go back for. These are the starting points:

• Street food and evening menus — the closest thing to what you are probably picturing
• Barbecue and summer menus — cooked outside, in front of people
• Sharing and feasting menus — long tables, everything down the middle
• Bowl food menus — for the part of the day when nobody is sitting down
• Vegan and vegetarian menus — usually a bigger share of the room at this kind of wedding

The thing worth deciding early is whether people eat in one sitting or across an afternoon. It changes the kit, the staffing and the cost.

One sitting, or across the afternoon?

This is the decision that shapes everything else, and it is worth making early because it changes the kit, the staffing and the cost.

One sitting means everybody eats at roughly the same time, as they would at a wedding breakfast, just informally and without a seating plan. It is cheaper to staff and easier to time round speeches.

Across the afternoon means stalls or stations open for two or three hours and people eat when they feel like it. It is the thing most couples are actually picturing when they say “festival”, and it is significantly more expensive, because it needs the same staff standing there for three times as long. There is nothing wrong with that — it just should not be a surprise on the quote.

Where the tipi or stretch tent changes things

Open-sided structures are the point of this kind of wedding and they change the catering. Wind moves through them, which affects service and anything plated. Cooking is usually visible, which is good — people gather round it — but it means the back of house is on show and has to look like it deserves to be.

The kitchen build is the same as any field wedding: our own power, water and refrigeration. See marquee wedding catering for what that involves.

Seating, and the mistake people make

Festival-style does not mean nowhere to sit. It means not everybody sits at once. A rough rule is seating for around two thirds of the guests — hay bales, benches, long tables, a few rugs — because there will always be a proportion of the room who need to sit and a proportion who would rather stand.

Weddings that go wrong here are the ones with seating for thirty and a hundred and forty guests, where the older half of the room ends up standing for six hours and leaves early.

Children

These weddings tend to have more children than a formal one, and children eat earlier and differently. Tell us the number and we will feed them first, simply, before the adults start — it makes the rest of the day considerably calmer.