Late Night Snacks

Many venues are not even allowing that many. In a perfect world, most people stay till the end. But late night snacks are always optional and a new trend

I had my wedding before the pandemic and I want to say people staying after 9 PM was not many. I had 250 people and I can honestly remember most of them leaving by then

We had a late night snack and I believe our venue based the price and number of the total number of people that we gave them as a headcount for dinner. There is no way to know for sure how many people will stay for the entire reception.

I definitely do not. I always leave by 19:00

I've never been to a wedding with a late night snack, so that's very new. We're not having one and we're estimating 170ish showing up, and we have our venue till 11pm. There's also no telling how many guests will actually stay after 9, so it's really a 'know your crowd' type of situation. We're expecting most of our guests to stay till 11pm because we're party people lol. Even so, we aren't having a late night snack option because: 1. I think it's more of a trend thing, and 2. Budget isn't going to allow that extra food.

If you really want to have a late night snack option, then you could always just have something like the cocktail bar. Have small bites here and there so guests can easily grab and go, but it's also not TOO much food to where you'll suffer a great loss from people not eating it.

As a guest, I stay till the end so I've seen the 'send-off', and last dance call has been made from the DJ.

I’d say 75% of our guests stayed past 9:00 p.m. As a guest, I typically stay until the end. I love the late night snack idea!

As a guest I’ve almost always stayed until the end. I’m a foodie so I love the late night snack idea for sure! It’s a definitely a newer trend though, and hard to estimate.

Ive been to a bunch of weddings and a lot of people stay all night so i would plan on catering to the amount you invited just to be safe unless you know some of them will not stay.

Wedding is a matter of time. When I go to a wedding, I do not like to stay a long time inside and generally leave the wedding place just between 9.30-10,00 pm. I do not know whether this info works for you, hope it helps. Good luck!

Know your crowd for this one. Is it mostly friends/people who like to party? Older family friends? This should help you figure it out.

We had a scheduled end time of 9:00 and by 8:30 most of our guests were gone so we wrapped up early. It was mostly parents and bridal party left.
Our ceremony started at 2:30 In January. We were getting a wintery mix for reference. That may have played a factor.

Our caterers is making us pizza rolls for our late night snack (9pm) Im freaking excited haha

I would ask your venue what they typically do for late night snacks. For you to price estimate, I would count out families with kids (Parents and Kids under 13), older folks who tend not to stay late or drive at night, and non immediate family. Usually the only folks who tend to stay late are friends of the bride and groom, bridal party, immediate family, younger family members without kids, out of town guests, and the "party people."

Another thought is to also use the hotel block to do a guest estimate, since those folks planned to stay late and stay in town until the next morning.

Thank you for asking this questions, because we are also doing a late night snack and I never thought to think that not 100% of guests would stay late.

I always stay to the end, and I'd say a good portion of our guests did, too. But we're also in the city, and only a few of our friends have kids so far.

This is a know-your-crowd thing. Do you have a lot of night owls and party people? Or do you have a lot of parents and/or early birds?

I'd love to try that late-night snack trend too, so if I ever be in one, I'll definitely stay until it's over!

We're only starting at 6pm, so I would expect our guests to stay until the end which is around midnight. They know the times in advance so they can plan accordingly. Thinking about a late night snack, too, maybe mini pretzels, a cheese platter, pizza rolls or sliders. If you're more on the sweet side, you could have different kinds of cookies or mini cupcakes in different flavours.

I stayed pass 9 at my cousins wedding she had before covid. She had pizza delivered, I thought it was pretty awesome.

Here in NJ, food venues must stop food and drink service at 10 pm.

Right now, we have a late-night snack in our venue contract, but even before COVID, we started having second thoughts about it. Most of our guests would be coming in from out of town, and many of the local ones have kids (we're having a kids-free wedding, except for immediate family), so I imagine they all won't want to stay late. There's a really good ice cream place next door to our venue, though, so we've thought maybe instead, whoever's left behind can make an ice cream run at 10pm! xD