Thai Wedding Food Ideas for London and Essex Weddings

Guests forget the chair covers, but they remember the food. If you want your wedding meal to feel different without being difficult, Thai street food is a lovely fit: colourful, sociable, easy to make vegan or gluten-free, and served hot and fresh at the venue. Here are the ideas couples ask us about most at weddings across London and Essex.

Start with Thai canapés during the drinks reception

The gap between the ceremony and the meal can feel long, especially during photos. Bite-sized Thai canapés keep guests happy and give everyone something to talk about. Popular choices are chicken satay with peanut sauce, mini vegetable spring rolls, golden fish cakes, pork gyoza on spoons and green papaya salad served in little bamboo boats.

Allow about six to eight canapés per guest for a reception before a meal. Ours start at £2 each, handed round by our team.

Choose a wedding breakfast style that suits your day

There is more than one way to serve a Thai wedding meal:

• Food stations. Hot counters where guests are served by our team and can come back for more. Relaxed, sociable and the most popular choice.
• Sharing platters. Dishes brought to each table so guests help themselves. Perfect for long barn tables and a family feel.
• Plated. A more formal option, served course by course.

A good balance is two or three mains with jasmine rice, for example a mild, rich massaman curry, a fragrant green curry and a wok-fried pad thai, with chicken, tofu or prawn options.

Bring the food van for the evening

Evening guests arrive hungry, and the dance floor gets hungrier. Our converted horse-box food van can park up at the venue and cook pad thai and spring rolls to order, which feeds evening-only guests without a second buffet and looks lovely in photos. Some couples use the van for the whole day, which suits festival-style and garden weddings.

Finish with mango sticky rice

Many guests have never tried mango sticky rice: sweet coconut sticky rice with fresh ripe mango. It is naturally vegan and gluten-free, so everyone can have it, and it makes a light finish after the wedding cake.

Make every diet feel welcome

Thai food is naturally good at this. Rice and rice noodles replace wheat, coconut milk replaces cream, and most dishes can be made with tofu. We have catered weddings that were fully vegan from canapés to dessert, and weddings where every dish had a vegan twin, cooked and served separately. Every dish is labelled for the 14 major allergens, and chilli is served on the side so nobody is caught out.

Venues that suit Thai wedding catering

Because we bring our own cooking equipment, we can cater in places without a kitchen: marquees, tipis, barns, village halls and gardens, as well as hotels and venues that welcome outside caterers. In London that might be a warehouse space or a garden in Hackney; in Essex a barn near Dunmow, a marquee in the Rodings or a hotel in Chelmsford. Ask your venue whether outside caterers are allowed before you book.

How to plan it

• Fix your date, venue and rough guest numbers, including evening guests.
• Decide which parts of the day you want us for: canapés, the meal, the evening or all three.
• Book a tasting to choose your dishes.
• Share dietary requirements as soon as your RSVPs come in.

See our Thai wedding catering menus and prices, read what wedding catering costs in the UK, or ask for a quote for your date.