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The cake at my first wedding was excellent ... one of those where the gal works out of her house and makes sure it's perfect. But I can't recall the food. There were so many people there, my plate was built without me and delivered to my spot at the head table. Doesn't seem at all memorable.

Now, Mary and I have been married just over four years. With her Polish heritage, at our reception we had mounds of pierogies sautéed in butter and onions, and Polish kielbasa braised in Guinness, all of which we'd done ourselves. Guests asked to take some home! The cake was actually from the Kroger bakery, which around here is pretty darn good. We use their cakes for all kinds of events and they never let us down.

One family I grew up with had four girls. For every one of those weddings their dad dug a pit in the backyard and roasted a whole pig, which was delivered to the hall in one piece. Regardless of the caterer, that caterer had to accomodate the thing. It was by far the most popular part of those receptions. You just need a dad who's willing to take that kind of time to do it right.

My wedding was almost 25 yrs ago but we did a Champagne Brunch. It was at a restaurant overlooking the brink of Niagara Falls, a beautiful view from the dining room. It was nice because the brunch was over by 3 pm and didn't take up everyones day, plus not as much alchol involved. We had a sting quartet for music. My older sister married a few years after me and did a brunch also at a different place, Oh Yeah the food was great!

My wedding food? Which wedding?

I've been to weddings where the food was sublime. Unfortunately that's not always the case.

The most recent wedding I attended had abysmal food. Over (WAY over) cooked pork roast, so/so potatoes, and the rest was so bad I have forgotten it. (Keep in mind this wedding was in November.) When salad is the high point of a buffet wedding feast, you know you're in trouble.

One bright spot - the groom's aunt made the wedding cake and it was a delectable carrot cake. About 6 layers (very high slices), incredibly tasty, and covered with beautiful, professional-looking fondant icing - I'm glad it was the last thing I ate.

The most memorable wedding food I've ever had was at a place on Long Island called Flowerfield's. Butler served baby lambchops, those little lolipop morsels, opened the reception - and it only got better. Incredible course after course - for hundreds of people. Flawless. I don't know what that wedding cost but I wish I could tell the bride and groom (long since lost touch) it was worth every penny they paid.

I've never been married but I've never had bad wedding food at those I've gone to. Maybe it's because most weddings I've been to have used a kosher caterer.

We had a pasta buffet at our wedding. It was fantastic, our caterer came up with six different kinds of pasta dishes, and we had a couple of salads, garlic bread, and breadsticks to go with it. We wanted something non-traditional and crowd pleasing, and that was what we decided on. Plus, it sort of complimented the fact that we had DH and the groomsmen wear gangster suits instead of tuxes.

Oh, and we didn't have a regular wedding cake either. We had cheesecake with a huge assortment of fruit toppings to please. The best one was the fresh kiwi slices.

At my cousin's I specially requested a vegetarian dinner, which was breaded eggplant atop some fragrantly spiced couscous. It was sublime--for the two bites I had before I nearly fell asleep. Between driving 2.5hrs to get there, finding a parking place, watching the wedding photographer artfully create shots where she and her husband posed around scattered rose petals, the ceremony, the toasting, reception, and so forth, dinner was served around 11:30pm, and I was so weak from hunger and lack of sleep (it was on a Friday night and had been a busy week for me) that I couldn't last.

I'm always surprised people notice wedding food, given that there is so much else going on.

I'm a wedding photographer so I go to weddings all the time and get to sample all manner of wedding foods and cakes. Of the 100+ weddings I've been to so far, only a couple stand out as having really great food. Most of the rest of the food has been average, and a few meals have been downright inedible, especially if we get stuck in the bar eating "bandwiches". Blecch.

I got married 14 years ago, and my hubby and I had to pay for it ourselves. We were young and money was tight (hmmm...not so much has changed!) so we had to do our wedding as cheaply as possible...we still wanted to have a sit-down dinner, so we found the cheapest caterer we could. Um, can I just say, you get what you pay for. Dry chicken hunks, soggy green beans and bland potatoes. Then for dessert we had non-traditional strawberry shortcake, which was more like cook-whip covered hockey pucks drizzled with watered down jelly. We had ordered a small wedding cake for just the bridal party and family (again, trying to save money) and it came from a great bakery in Cambridge, MA called Rosie's. It was three layers, each one different, and covered with roses. Really pretty. Too bad the servers never served it. I was too overwhelmed to notice until the next day. Oh, if I had to do it all over again, I WOULD!

My husband and I got married about two weeks before we were scheduled to move from Texas to England. We wanted to keep our ceremony and reception very simple and intimate -- no elaborate cakes, no dinner, no dancing, etc. We decided to have a big bon voyage party before we left for England so we could spend quality time visiting with our family and friends (something most brides and grooms rarely have time to do at the reception or if they do, it's one big blur). We intentionally chose to have our ceremony in the chapel because it only sat 50 people which meant only immediate family and very close friends were invited. Extended family and other friends were invited to our bon voyage party.

Our reception was more of a "high tea". We had platters of grilled herb veggies and fresh fruit, a trio of deviled eggs (traditional, pesto, truffled), smoked salmon and beef tenderloin canapes, a continental cheese platter with assorted crackers and breads, and a miniature patisserie selection (cream puffs, chocolate decadence cakes, key lime tarts, cannoli, fresh fruit tarts). Whole Foods catered the event so the food and service were outstanding. They were even nice enough to provide small take-away containers for the guests so they could bring some goodies home with them. We had so much food left over, most of our guests left with at least two boxes of goodies.

I love all these creative ideas!

We were married in Mazatlan, Mexico 2 years ago -- my in-laws live there. The ceremony was out on a terrace overlooking the beach at a hotel in the touristy Gold Zone, with cocktails and great appetizers afterwards. Then we put everyone in these hilarious open-air trolleys to bring them to the colonial district for the reception.

Here's the funny part: We were planning to have the reception at an elegant, beautiful restaurant in the colonial district that my in-laws love -- but about a month before, the place was really struggling and looked like it might close. So my in-laws took over the restaurant! (It had always been a dream of my MIL's, she's a great cook. They just recently sold their interest in it.) We were paying for the wedding ourselves, so we got everything at cost, which helped a lot.

And the food was really spectacular (everyone thought so)! We had crema de cuitlacoche, salad, and a choice of 3 entrees that were right off the menu, all delicious and beautifully presented. For dessert we had tres leches cake with fruit on top -- the traditional Mexican wedding cake. Between that and the 11-piece Cuban band, it was fantastic fun and really memorable (at least, I hope so!).

Our wedding was done on the strictest of budgets, but we had 150 to feed. I have an unbelievably huge family. But 2 of my aunts offered to cook the food (they are semi-pros at this), and they made chicken mole with all the sides, and we bought tamales from a friend's mother (she makes the best). And I nearly forgot--I made a salad of jicama, melon, tomatoes, and oranges. Kind of dumb of me, to be supreming oranges and doing all that other knife work right after I got my nails done, but salads can't be made ahead. I thought it was all delicious.

They also made cookies for the sweets table, and the cakes were from the same "cake lady" that my cousin had used a few months before, and they were scrumptious, very moist, simple with fruit fillings, and she had the perfect ratio of cake to fillings/frostings. The last few weddings I've been to--with professional/commercial bakers--have been so over the top with the frosting that the cake (or what there is) is nearly inedible.

My same aunts made the food for my brothers wedding, which was also delicious, but I took over the cakes for that one (everyone said they were delicious, and folks came back for thirds, but they didn't look as I had hoped)

The in-house catered weddings I've attended have been the most boring food ever (chicken cordon blue?). The best "catered" weddings have been by local barbecue places. Granted, I don't know anyone who has had a posh wedding. In fact, our one splurge--relative to most of the weddings in the family/among our friends--was to rent proper table settings. As it turned out, between the mole, the sides, and the tamales, we needed that oversize china.

We just got married in September and I have to say our food was awesome for both the rehearsal dinner and the wedding reception. We were working on a budget but food was really important to us so we cut other places to be able to afford the food we wanted.

We started with passed appetizers which included shrimp scalling potstickers, spicy eggplant tingmo, crab cakes, and shiitake chopsticks. The dinner itself was served family style so people could taste a little of everything and everybody could get served at the same time.

The salad was a Tuscan grill bread salad with pesto, kalamata olives, mozzarella, and coppacola. The entrees were black cod with shiitakes and sesame salad, pork belly with muscat figs, lacinato kale with lemon and toasted garlic, garlic fried smashed potatoes, and brown butter delicata squash.

For dessert we had a donut lounge where they did made to order donuts with you choice of chocolate sauce, caramel, vanilla mascarpone, or a seasonal jam. We also had a cake that we got at a local bakery who does pretty cakes. We saved money by just ordering a regular cake and not a wedding cake because the regular cake looked like it could have been a wedding cake but for far less money.

This post is already super long so I won't put up what we had at our rehearsal dinner but that was amazing too. It was just a great food weekend that helped make it a perfect wedding.

@LPC--did you have the traditional bottle of vodka instead of champagne at each table?

Our wedding food was forgettable. Overdone burgundy-mushroom tri-tip, canned green beans with bacon and tomatoes, blah rice pilaf, fairly decent chicken, and rolls. There aren't a lot of terrific restaurants in our town that are large enough to host a large amount of people. Everyone seemed to like the food well enough. The cake, on the other hand, was fantastic. My best friend made it.

Very, very bad. So bad, it almost outweighs the fact that my MIL and SIL got into a fist fight over my bouquet.

Not having much money at the time, my sisters and I prepared the food. We kept it relatively simple. We had a few people man the buffet tables and served sliced turkey, ham, various antipasti, cheese, and fruit salad. We had a lot of compliments and had just the right amount of food.

Almost 13 years ago we had Great Performances cater our wedding. For the last 13 years we have had people tell us that the food at our wedding was some of the best food they have ever tasted. We planned our menu carefully and we brought in our own wines (14 different wines served by the glass, 2 Cabs, 2 Chards, 2 Zins, 2 Pinots, 2 Sauv. Blancs, a sparkling, a port, a cognac, an ice wine), but the food was prepared well & served well. In the years since, almost always when I hear about great wedding food it seems that Great Performances was the caterer. I am not a schill for Great Performances, but I am a fan through experience.

Our wedding food was quite awesome (12 years ago). I've also been to a few weddings since where the food was excellent.

Most is just okay. Some has been downright bad. My good friend JUST got married and gushed about the food - we dont' have the same taste in food - there was so much pepper on the chicken I couldn't eat it. And I *LIKE* pepper.

The food at my family weddings are all done by the same caterer. You remember elementary school, and how Thanksgiving dinner was pressed sliced turkey on white bread with gravy, mashed potatoes, and corn? Yeah, that's about right.