Author Topic: Jewish Wedding? (Read 2043 times)

Hmmm · « **Reply #15 on:** August 29, 2019, 08:59:08 am »

Quote from: Aleko on August 29, 2019, 02:10:06 am

I'm curious about 'salad was served'. Several people have mentioned it as an understood thing, but I've never heard of, let alone encountered, salad being served as a separate event to a meal. (In fact over here it's quite rare for salad even to be a separate course; that only happens in very formal, old-fashioned multi-course banquets.) How does that even work? Is it a fork-buffet kind of thing (though I'd have thought salad was about the hardest kind of thing to eat with a fork only), or are people served seated? Is it actually salad, in the sense of lettuce, tomatoes, etc, or just a name for a plate of canapés? I can't envisage it at all.

It sounds to me like this wedding was pretty typical and had a cocktail hour where hor d'oeuvres were served as either passed or from a buffet. Then for dinner, everyone was seated. It is usually a 3 course meal with a salad being the typical first course, second course a main and a couple of sides, and third being a dessert course.

Typical salad is mixed greens, some type of cheese, some nuts, and a fruit or additional vegetable. Usually served with a vinaigrette but some times they'll provide salad dressing options.
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wedding-event-food-preparation-96894727

If the full meal is served as a buffet, then a salad plate is offered and people self serve their salad and another plate is offered to make their main course meal. Which is why a lot of people say they don't like buffets as they don't like carrying 2 plates back to their table.

edited because after re-reading I realized that one of my comments came off snarky and I didn't mean for it too. I'm aware that serving a salad as a first course in Europe is unusual.

Songbird · « **Reply #16 on:** August 29, 2019, 09:33:41 am »

Exactly. For each of my daughters' bat mitzvah parties, I had a cocktail hour with passed hor d'oeuvres and several buffet stations. When the adults went in to dinner, the waitstaff served a salad course, a main course (I think the choices were chicken, prime rib or fish, with two sides), cake and coffee/tea.

I had a separate dinner for my daughters and their friends, a buffet with hot dogs, hamburgers, fries, etc. You wouldn't see that at a wedding, but teenagers at a bar/bat mitzvah are not interested in prime rib.

gellchom · « **Reply #17 on:** August 29, 2019, 01:19:33 pm »

Quote from: Aleko on August 29, 2019, 02:10:06 am

I'm curious about 'salad was served'. Several people have mentioned it as an understood thing, but I've never heard of, let alone encountered, salad being served as a separate event to a meal. (In fact over here it's quite rare for salad even to be a separate course; that only happens in very formal, old-fashioned multi-course banquets.) How does that even work? Is it a fork-buffet kind of thing (though I'd have thought salad was about the hardest kind of thing to eat with a fork only), or are people served seated? Is it actually salad, in the sense of lettuce, tomatoes, etc, or just a name for a plate of canapés? I can't envisage it at all.

I know that in many countries salad is served after the main course. In the US, though, a tossed green salad is a very common starter.

kckgirl · « **Reply #18 on:** August 29, 2019, 02:16:04 pm »

I would not enjoy a wedding as described in the original post regardless of the religious beliefs of the happy couple. I'm pretty sure I would have left by 8:30 too, especially on a night where I was expected at work the next day.

Aleko · « **Reply #19 on:** August 30, 2019, 07:24:18 am »

Quote

People were seated for the speeches and first dances and then the staff gave every on an individual plate of salad, which was greens, strawberries, and maybe pecans and some sort of cheese? There was also bread on the table. Then these plates and the bread were all cleared and nothing was served for quite a bit of time (not sure how much time passed because I left at 8:30 and no one was being served any additional food.)

That would be a big surprise for British guests. This side of the Pond, you don't call people to sit at table (for any kind of dinner, not just weddings) till you're ready to serve the meal. At most there will be a brief few words of welcome and perhaps a grace before the starters are served. Nor have I ever heard of a break for dancing between courses! At most I have known, not at weddings but at other kinds of sit-down dinner, a break of maybe 10 minutes filled by a cabaret turn or a short talk (e.g. at a Trafalgar Night dinner we got a brief talk about the battle between each course). At mainstream British weddings - I can't answer for conservative Jewish or ethnic-minority weddings) speeches and toasts come after dinner, and dancing starts after that.

RubyCat · « **Reply #20 on:** August 30, 2019, 08:12:50 am »

These pauses between course might be something that is becoming more common. I've only been to one Jewish wedding and it had a buffet. However, I've been to two Christian weddings, one this past summer and one last year (2018), in which there was a long gap between the courses. It really dragged out the meal and I found it much less enjoyable. If I recall, there were a lot of people getting up and socializing between courses at the 2018 wedding and I think some people may have dance between courses at the wedding last summer. I wonder if this might be a new trend? I hope not.

Songbird · « **Reply #21 on:** August 30, 2019, 08:37:55 am »

I think it might be somewhat or a regional thing as well. I've been to several weddings here on Long island where the ceremony was held in a church and the reception held in a banquet hall, with a similar pattern -- introduction of the wedding party, first dance, starter course, dancing, dinner, speeches, parent-child dances, dancing, cake cutting, dessert.

gellchom · « **Reply #22 on:** September 11, 2019, 02:46:07 pm »

Quote from: Aleko on August 30, 2019, 07:24:18 am

Quote
People were seated for the speeches and first dances and then the staff gave every on an individual plate of salad, which was greens, strawberries, and maybe pecans and some sort of cheese? There was also bread on the table. Then these plates and the bread were all cleared and nothing was served for quite a bit of time (not sure how much time passed because I left at 8:30 and no one was being served any additional food.)

That would be a big surprise for British guests. This side of the Pond, you don't call people to sit at table (for any kind of dinner, not just weddings) till you're ready to serve the meal. At most there will be a brief few words of welcome and perhaps a grace before the starters are served. Nor have I ever heard of a break for dancing between courses! At most I have known, not at weddings but at other kinds of sit-down dinner, a break of maybe 10 minutes filled by a cabaret turn or a short talk (e.g. at a Trafalgar Night dinner we got a brief talk about the battle between each course). At mainstream British weddings - I can't answer for conservative Jewish or ethnic-minority weddings) speeches and toasts come after dinner, and dancing starts after that.

Re: the bolded --

Does that hold true if the guests have just been eating lots of appetizers during a cocktail hour, too? Or is a cocktail hour with heavy apps not a thing there?

Jem didn't tell us what kinds of appetizers were served during the cocktail hour or how long it lasted. In my community, there is so much food during the cocktail hour, you can definitely be stuffed before you even get to the tables. And multiply that by 20 for a Long Island or Israeli wedding -- the food is so big during the cocktail hour it would be a LOT even for the main meal. Like, maybe, a prime rib station, a sushi station, passed items like potato pancakes, crudite, lamb chops, fruit, little soup cups, and on and on. People don't hold back! That's why I asked Jem if she noticed people eating a lot during the cocktail hour; if this schedule is typical in that community, they would know that it would be a while until substantial food is served. I usually fill up on the appetizers, because they are my favorite part anyway.

Often, in my community, the first course, if it is salad, is already on the tables when we enter the dining room. If not, it is usually served pretty soon, certainly much faster than at the wedding Jem attended. I wonder if the size of the crowd made a difference in how fast the kitchen and servers were able to get all the tables served; I'm guessing, from there being two full tables of one of the bride's parent's work colleagues, that it was a very big wedding. (Or maybe the hora just went on so long because the crowd was into it, and the coordinator didn't predict that and for some reason had told the servers not to put salad out until they finished, which turned out to be a bad idea.) Did I guess right about the size, Jem?

Jem · « **Reply #23 on:** September 11, 2019, 03:10:14 pm »

Quote from: Gellchom on September 11, 2019, 02:46:07 pm

Quote from: Aleko on August 30, 2019, 07:24:18 am
Quote
People were seated for the speeches and first dances and then the staff gave every on an individual plate of salad, which was greens, strawberries, and maybe pecans and some sort of cheese? There was also bread on the table. Then these plates and the bread were all cleared and nothing was served for quite a bit of time (not sure how much time passed because I left at 8:30 and no one was being served any additional food.)

That would be a big surprise for British guests. This side of the Pond, you don't call people to sit at table (for any kind of dinner, not just weddings) till you're ready to serve the meal. At most there will be a brief few words of welcome and perhaps a grace before the starters are served. Nor have I ever heard of a break for dancing between courses! At most I have known, not at weddings but at other kinds of sit-down dinner, a break of maybe 10 minutes filled by a cabaret turn or a short talk (e.g. at a Trafalgar Night dinner we got a brief talk about the battle between each course). At mainstream British weddings - I can't answer for conservative Jewish or ethnic-minority weddings) speeches and toasts come after dinner, and dancing starts after that.

Re: the bolded --

Does that hold true if the guests have just been eating lots of appetizers during a cocktail hour, too? Or is a cocktail hour with heavy apps not a thing there?

Jem didn't tell us what kinds of appetizers were served during the cocktail hour or how long it lasted. In my community, there is so much food during the cocktail hour, you can definitely be stuffed before you even get to the tables. And multiply that by 20 for a Long Island or Israeli wedding -- the food is so big during the cocktail hour it would be a LOT even for the main meal. Like, maybe, a prime rib station, a sushi station, passed items like potato pancakes, crudite, lamb chops, fruit, little soup cups, and on and on. People don't hold back! That's why I asked Jem if she noticed people eating a lot during the cocktail hour; if this schedule is typical in that community, they would know that it would be a while until substantial food is served. I usually fill up on the appetizers, because they are my favorite part anyway.

Often, in my community, the first course, if it is salad, is already on the tables when we enter the dining room. If not, it is usually served pretty soon, certainly much faster than at the wedding Jem attended. I wonder if the size of the crowd made a difference in how fast the kitchen and servers were able to get all the tables served; I'm guessing, from there being two full tables of one of the bride's parent's work colleagues, that it was a very big wedding. (Or maybe the hora just went on so long because the crowd was into it, and the coordinator didn't predict that and for some reason had told the servers not to put salad out until they finished, which turned out to be a bad idea.) Did I guess right about the size, Jem?

It was an open bar and there were servers walking around with trays of various fancy but light appetizers. It was a big wedding, but not like 450 people or anything I don't think. It seemed like maybe 200-250 people? Maybe 150? I am a poor judge of crowd size!

I think the wedding ceremony started at 5:30 and was finished by 6:00, and the cocktail hour started immediately after and lasted for maybe 30-45 minutes? I wasn't really keeping an eye on the clock until we all were realizing that there was nothing coming after the salad. At some point into the cocktail hour people started going in and sitting down so my work friends and I did too. I bet the speeches started at maybe 6:45ish? And then the salad was brought out so I think we assumed we would eat and then dancing would follow.....

But the dances started and the salad was consumed and cleared and then a loooooong time of nothing on the tables and the servers simply standing around and we left at I think it was 8:30. I wasn't monitoring what people were eating or drinking during the cocktail hour, but there were very few tall tables and I didn't see anyone with a plate at all.

I think maybe part of the issue/confusion for me was that this was a Sunday night. It just would never occur to me to expect wedding guests to be out partying late into a Sunday night since most would have to work the next morning. We left at 8:30 because even if the next course were served starting right then (it wasn't) by the time our meals got to us it would 15 minutes later and pretty soon we wouldn't be home until well after 10:00. Way past my bedtime, especially for a Sunday night!!!!

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Author Topic: Jewish Wedding? (Read 2043 times)

Hmmm

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Songbird

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gellchom

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kckgirl

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Aleko

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RubyCat

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Songbird

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gellchom

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Jem

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