Celebration Of Life Catering: When It Is Not A Traditional Wake

Not every gathering after a funeral is a wake

A traditional funeral tea has a shape everybody recognises: sandwiches cut small, sausage rolls, quiche, cake with the tea, an hour or two, everyone in dark clothes.

A celebration of life is something else, and we cater more of them every year. Sometimes it is instead of a funeral, sometimes weeks afterwards, sometimes on what would have been a birthday. What they have in common is that the family has decided the gathering should feel like the person.

That changes the catering in ways worth thinking about.

Start with what they actually liked

The single most useful question, and the one most caterers never ask: what did they eat?

We have catered celebrations of life built round a hog roast because he ran the barbecue every summer for thirty years. Round a grazing table because she was the one who always brought the cheese. Round a full curry night because that was Friday in that house. None of that is unusual and none of it is disrespectful. It is the opposite.

If there is a dish, a cuisine or a habit that belongs to the person, tell us and we will build round it. It costs no more than the standard answer.

The formats that work

Grazing tables. Boards run together along one long table at £97.00 a crate serving ten. People come and go, pick, talk, come back. It suits a gathering with no fixed sitting-down moment, which is most of them.

A hog roast. From £795 for up to fifty guests. Right where the gathering is outdoors or at a club, and where the person would have found a formal tea faintly ridiculous.

A hot buffet. £23.50 a head, minimum fifty, cooked and served at your venue. For an evening gathering that is more like a party than a tea.

And the traditional buffet, from £5.50 a head, which is still the right answer for plenty of families and should not be talked out of anybody.

Timing is different too

A wake follows a service and fits into a known gap. A celebration of life often has no service attached, which means the food is the structure of the afternoon.

That usually means putting it out early and leaving it out longer, and it means people arrive across a much wider window. Order for the full guest list rather than the number you expect at any one moment, and expect the room to turn over.

What we will ask you

The date, roughly how many, the venue and the time. Then, if you want to tell us, something about the person, what they liked, what they always made, what they would have found funny.

You do not have to. Plenty of families want the standard thing done well and that is entirely fine. But we would rather ask than assume, and the answer often makes the afternoon.

Practical things

Dietary requirements are prepared separately and labelled, and every buffet is 30% vegetarian before you ask. Give us the number for each if you can.

Numbers moving is normal: people who did not attend the service often come to the gathering, and vice versa. Ring us if it changes; we send slightly over as standard on any occasion like this.

Arranging one? Funeral catering covers the practical side, and the phone is usually easier than a form: 0115 647 6903.