We’re getting married in a couple of months, DIY type.. we’re supplying / making all the food for around 100 adults, 25 kids in the day, around 40/15 extra in the evening.

No sit down meal, just an eat when you want type event. We’re paying a guy to operate the BBQ for us (there’ll be loads of other non-BBQ food as well), but as of yet have no BBQ.

Original plan was to have my brother-in-law to weld together an oil barrel charcoal type BBQ, but we’re a bit concerned about keeping it hot for 6/7 hours, plus any smoke ruining the day if it’s windy?

So currently thinking of 1) Borrowing a bbq for the 3-4 veggies (or using our existing small charcoal one)

and then either

A) Renting one of these types – will cost nearly £200 by the time you factor in gas and delivery.

B) Buying a similar cheaper version of the above such as this https://www.caterkwik.co.uk/cgi-bin/trolleyed_public.cgi?action=showprod_CK9111 as then we can keep it, and it seems easy storage/cleaning/portable etc? Costs slightly extra, but we get a BBQ to take home, and don’t have to worry about arranging collection of the rented BBQ

C) Buying a regular style BBQ like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fire-Mountain-Everest-Burner-Barbecue/dp/B00JWNRI7Y/ or similar – this is roughly our budget (£250 max), have a £75 amazon voucher to spend

D) Get lucky and find something decent second hand (unlikely due to time of year!)

I’m leaning towards option B) as it looks low maintenance/easy storage – what would STW do? Any downsides to this type of BBQ?

Edit: Wildcard Option E): Get a large electric hotplate type: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Commercial-Electric-Griddle-Countertop-Kitchen-Hotplate-BBQ-Stainless-Steel-73cm/362086489602

We had a similar vibe wedding. No sit down meal, wedding was at 3pm so we only had to feed guests once in the evening.

We went hog roast, they served with potatoes and salads, sausages for the kids etc. It was great! would definitely do it again.

Hopefully our guests will think the same trailwagger 🙂

Found another option: something like this.. https://www.amazon.co.uk/griddle-burner-cast-iron-Tristar-Bq-6395/dp/B003DZ0EZU/ – gas griddle plate.. no idea what to do now?!

You’ll never cook for 125 folk on option C, even over 6-7 hours! Recently helped a mate cook for about 40 folk at a party in his garden using 3 barbies similar to the one in the link and it was hard work and took us a good few hours of constant cooking. You can only really use about 50-75% of the surface area of the grill at any one time as you need to keep the food moving.

I’d definitely look at hog roast – might not be much more than renting Option B, but if going down the barbie route then bigger is better and definitely gas for this application.

I’ve got a 5 burner gas one, like option C i think. I can’t see any way you’d cook for 100 on that. It would take ages. For burgers and sausages type of thing I think (depending on the system) you’d need to do a burn off before you cooked it all or you’d be getting fires with all the fat gathering. We pretty regularly cook for 5 or 6 friends and it’s great for that. I thought about using it for our guests at lunchtime but I think it would take ages even for 15-20 people. Mine has a rotating thing, good for about 4 chickens but takes an hour or so. You can do a couple of suckling pigs on it but again that’s not going to feed 100.

I’ve been to a few weddings with hog roasts and it’s great.

125 people is a lot of people for bbq.

Need heavy duty cookers and go gas.

There is a facebook forum called countrywoodsmoke that has a number of event cooks on, may be worth a look. If it were my wedding I’d want to know the food was going to be properly prepared and not want to have to do too much of it myself, this will of course be more costly than DIY and gas burner as you’ve mentioned.

The hog roast really may make it easier, cost a little more but not too much and you can still prepare as many sides and veggie options as you want?

Hog Roast. Don’t bother trying to cook for that many people on a BBQ – you’ll be there all day, and it will be massively hard work for someone.

Stealth ad, and contrary to the above advise – we have a three plate Outback gas BBQ we are going to sell before we (hopefully) move this year. Don’t need much for it, if you are close to Hampshire…

you’ll be there all day, and it will be massively hard work for someone

This, so much this. That is a massive undertaking on anything less than a proper catering trade set-up and you would need to go gas otherwise you’ll be throwing charcoal on every 45 minutes (then you need to wait for it to burn down, otherwise people will be getting some revolting-tasting food cooked over fresh coals.

We did a BBQ for a similar amount of people (wedding reception in the in-laws big garden) but got professional caterers in to do all the food.

If you have a budget (and if he is available – he gets booked up quickly) Crackerjack BBQ are amazing. If he was around when we got married I’d have booked him.

Another idea might be to dig a pit*, or just get hold of some bricks/blocks and build up a pit.

*depends on the venue, they might not take kindly to holes being dug in the lawn

Have a look at countryfirekitchen.com and drop him an email. Very helpful and his kit is superb so you could most likely sell it on post the event if you wanted to do it yourself. Or you could just get him to cook for the wedding although i don’t know how his fee would compare to the cost of the DIY approach. Worth asking the question though as DIY you’re going to need some reasonable fire management skills and a cooking set up big enough to cope.

We did something similar for our wedding – but we hired in a ‘man with BBQ’ and i bought the meat from Costco (big chunks of beef which we cut down into steaks)
The guy was brilliant (friend of a friend) he turned up with a 2m long gas griddle and various ‘hot hold’ serving dishes etc.
He had a lad helping him but was run ragged for a couple of hours.

I wouldn’t bother buying a BBQ – as the kit you need to feed 100+ is much bigger than you’ll need in the garden for future use.
Also, as others have said – you’ll need good fire management to keep coals at the right temp to cook for that number – going for a charcoal option is only worth it if you a slow-cooking, in you are just ‘grilling’ gas is so much easier to control.

I’d also price up the hog-roast option – they run a pretty slick operation and are pretty good value for money.

Hey Guys – thanks for this, much appreciated, food for thought and all that!

Can’t dig a pit as we’re renting the venue – however I think we’ve probably ruled charcoal out – too much hassle!

siwhite – we/the wedding are in Cornwall, so might be a bit far – thanks anyway though!

I’m gonna rethink it a little bit – essentially the original plan was food served all day from midday

1/2 bbq stuff (homemade burgers, sausages, steaks, kebabs etc)
1/2 kitchen/oven stuff (Mac n cheese, ribs, pulled pork, cold meats, quiches etc)

Which are all prepared well in advance and cooked/heated/served on the day) plus loads of salads, snacks, dessert stuff etc.

I kinda presumed that as long as we could serve 40ish portions an hour from the BBQ(s) then that would be fine? Or is this overly ambitious? We have 3 large electric food warmers to keep food warm for BBQ and kitchen food.

Edit: We’ve got 4 (paid) staff lined up to help with this at the moment (them cooking/bringing out the food, the rest being self service)

Evening guests arrive at 5pm or 7:30pm, will be around 40ish (waiting on replies, past the deadline though?!)

Everyone will want food around the same time, it’s just our nature 🙁

Yeah I imagine so.. free bar though (that’s where the budget is going!) so that might distract a few!

If you can, get someone else to do the whole thing, if you’re involved in any of the process it will suck up your time and ruin your day. Also, Leffeboy is correct, everyone, especially the kids, will be clamouring for food at the same time.
Good luck and have a wonderful day.

Yeah I imagine so.. free bar though (that’s where the budget is going!) so that might distract a few!

I’d take some of your free bar budget and spend it on getting the food sorted properly.

Everyone will want to eat whereas not everyone will appreciate a free bar.

If you can, get someone else to do the whole thing, if you’re involved in any of the process it will suck up your time and ruin your day. Also, Leffeboy is correct, everyone, especially the kids, will be clamouring for food at the same time.
Good luck and have a wonderful day.

Thanks, will take your advice on board 🙂

I’d take some of your free bar budget and spend it on getting the food sorted properly. Everyone will want to eat whereas not everyone will appreciate a free bar.

Thanks Jambo, will have a think..

We had two weddings – one in Australia (“full service”) and one in the UK (where we tried to do everything except the catering, DIY)

The DIY nature of the second event really impacted my enjoyment of the day – I couldn’t really relax and talk to my guests, because I was “stage managing” the day myself.

In hindsight, I would have spent a bit of extra cash to make things easier for myself, so that I could enjoy the day a bit more.

Thanks batfink – I’ll have a think about what I will need to do on the day – am happy to put the work in beforehand/afterwards, but will see if there’s a way I can minimise effort on the day.

Get the bbq man to bring his own kit. If he can bbq for 120 people he’ll have kit.