Wedding Canapes
One particular facet of wedding catering that is often overlooked is wedding canapés – which is a shame, since your wedding reception is a perfect opportunity to indulge in such little luxuries as these. The right food, skilfully prepared and scaled down to bite-size portions, can be a blessing throughout your long and busy day – as the bride and groom, you’ll be in constant demand, so a few trays of delicate morsels to nibble on will keep your guests content while you attend to other things. The food doesn’t have to be anything fancy – as the old saying goes, if you can’t eat it easily with your fingers, it’s not a canape – but the artistic appearance can really raise the tone of your reception.
Wedding Canapes can be tailored to fit your schedule, or wedding theme, if you have one; with the food co-ordinated by sweet, savoury, hot, cold, country of origin and presentation. Canapes are often served alongside Champagne, or a nice Cava. Food can be purchased in package deals – a certain number of individual canapes per guest, for a set price, and many catering organisations will offer professional waiting staff of their own at a minor, extra cost.
Be honest: how often do you get to tuck into a canape? The opportunity to enjoy a bite-size piece of gourmet cuisine tends not to crop up too often in most of our lives, but on your wedding day, you’re more than entitled to splash out on a little luxury. It’s not just yourself and your spouse-to-be who will appreciate the taste of living the high life – your guests will certainly be impressed, too.
Just because the food comes in small portions doesn’t mean it should be of a lower quality. The essence of the canape is good food, simply scaled down to the rough size of a single mouthful. They may come in many forms – soups can be served as single-serving ‘shooters’ in a vessel similar to a shot glass, miniature fish and chips are often served from small wooden cones, and so on.
Depending on when you intend for your canapes to be served, you can choose between hot, cold or warm variations. For a summer wedding, a hot canape would be less welcome in the early afternoon than a cold one, for example – whereas if guests are feeling peckish at a winter wedding, or canapes are being passed around in the evening, warm or hot dishes might be more welcome.
Another benefit of including the serving of canapes in your wedding budget is keeping your guests entertained and content, while you as bride and groom are otherwise engaged. For instance, many couples opt for a private photography session between the wedding ceremony, and the reception. While you’re indisposed, however, your guests are left floating around the reception venue, awaiting your arrival. Serving canapes at this stage gives guests something to focus on until you arrive, as well as tiding them over until the evening meal.
For a lot of people, the word ‘canape’ conjures up ideas of pretentiousness – tiny, pointless puffs of foods you’ve most likely never heard of. This really isn’t the case, however, and a canape doesn’t have to be fancy to be worthwhile. One of the most popular wedding canapes is miniature fish and chips – nothing gourmet there. You don’t need to serve foie gras with mustard seeds in duck jus for your guests to enjoy themselves – it doesn’t have to be expensive, as long as the food is tasty.
That isn’t to say that some thought shouldn’t go into the presentation of the food. A canape is supposed to be as pleasing on the eyes as it is on the tongue. Companies who specialise in, or offer, canapes as a catering option understand that finger-food can be both simple and attractive, so you know you’ll be getting a good deal on any canapes you order.
It’s not just the temperature of the food that you can negotiate to better fit your wedding. Depending on your wedding plans and when you intend to serve them, your canapes can be tailor-made – as sweet, savoury, spicy, sour, traditional or unusual as you like. If your wedding has a specific theme, you could select canapes which will closely match it – for an eastern or Asian wedding, for instance, you might like to order a small raft of chinese-themed canapes, like miniature duck rolls, or single spare ribs.
Traditionally, Champagne is served alongside canapes – although obviously it’s not always practical to adhere to this convention. If you have too many guests in attendance to make Champagne a viable option for pre-dinner drinks, or your budget simply won’t stretch to Champers, an affordable and popular alternative is Cava wine. Similarly sparkling, many drinkers actually prefer the taste to that of Champagne.
Obviously one canape is unlikely to be sufficient for a hungry guest. Many catering companies offer package deals, allowing you to purchase a set number of canapes (of your choice) for a set price, per person. This will often greatly reduce the cost of catering for your reception.
A tray of canapes will obviously need someone to carry it among the guests – and you’ll obviously be too busy mingling with your friends and family to do it yourself! Fortunately, catering companies often have their own professional waiters and waitresses, who can be hired to the client, along with their purchase of the food.
Canapes: a much underrated luxury element of the modern wedding. Providing simple food in bite-size portions is the catering company’s speciality – tailor-made to fit your big day. Hot, cold, sweet, sour, it’s all up to you. The perfect accompaniment to Champagne or Cava, served straight to you by trained professionals. Go on. Treat yourself.
