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The Art of the Edible Story

The New Rules of Wedding Catering According To Holly of Lettice Events

Claudia Judd June 5, 2026 8 Min Read

“Every wedding needs less stress and more personalisation”

For Holly Congdon, founder of sustainable catering company Lettice Events, the future of weddings isn’t about rigid traditions, overcomplicated timelines or copying what’s trending online. Instead, it’s about creating celebrations that feel deeply personal, days that genuinely reflect the couple at the centre of them.

“Every wedding needs less stress and more personalisation,” Holly says immediately when asked to summarise her approach.

It’s a deceptively simple statement, but one that perfectly captures the philosophy behind Lettice Events. Since relaunching the family business, Holly has built a catering company that feels refreshingly modern: design-led, hyper-personalised and rooted in sustainability, without ever feeling worthy or restrictive.

“We wanted to create something that felt a lot more fun and fresh,” she explains. “At the time, catering felt very traditional. It felt like you were hiring the same company your parents might have used. We wanted people to feel like when they called us, they were speaking to friends who genuinely cared about creating the best possible day for them.”

That warmth has become central to the brand’s identity. Couples aren’t simply choosing a caterer; they’re entering a collaborative creative process where every detail is designed to feel uniquely theirs.

Why modern couples want bespoke weddings

At the heart of Lettice Events is the belief that no two weddings should ever feel the same.

“Nothing is packaged,” Holly says. “Everything is bespoke.”

Rather than offering fixed menus or standard wedding formats, Holly and her team begin by understanding the couple themselves: how they host, what they love eating, the restaurants they return to, the atmosphere they want guests to experience and, most importantly, what actually matters to them.

“We always ask couples what they’ve loved and hated at weddings they’ve been to,” she explains. “Some people care most about an amazing meal and a long family-style lunch. Other people just want the best party imaginable. That’s completely fine too.”

Once those priorities are established, the team builds the event around them.

“If someone tells us they don’t care about sitting down for a formal three-course dinner and all they want is a packed dance floor, then we lean into that,” Holly says. “We might do one incredible course, get everyone dancing sooner and then bring out amazing late-night food later in the evening.”

For Holly, great wedding planning isn’t about imposing rules. It’s about understanding personality.

“Trying to apply one formula to every couple just doesn’t work,” she says. “Everyone’s version of the perfect wedding looks different.”

Sustainability without compromise

While Lettice Events is widely recognised for its sustainable credentials, Holly is careful not to position sustainability as a sacrifice.

“People still associate sustainability with compromise,” she says. “They assume it means less luxury, less excitement or that everything has to be plant-based and serious.”

Instead, Holly wanted sustainability to sit quietly behind the scenes. Integrated into the business so seamlessly that couples don’t need to think about it.

“We’re B Corp certified, carbon neutral and operate with zero-waste principles, but we don’t expect couples to become sustainability experts,” she explains. “That’s our responsibility.”

For Lettice, sustainability appears in thoughtful, practical ways: sourcing seasonal British produce, reducing waste, working with trusted suppliers and designing menus that celebrate what’s naturally available at that moment in time.

Menus change monthly rather than seasonally, allowing the team to work with ingredients at their absolute best.

“There’s such a difference between the beginning and end of a season,” Holly explains. “So we work month by month instead.”

It also encourages couples to embrace the timing of their wedding rather than fighting against it.

“If you’re getting married in May because your family garden looks beautiful then, or because you got engaged in spring, why wouldn’t you celebrate what’s naturally available during that moment?” she says. “Food becomes part of the storytelling.”

Creating menus that feel deeply personal

For Holly, sustainability and personalisation ultimately go hand in hand, and nowhere is that more visible than in the way Lettice approaches food.

“The thing we get asked most is, ‘These are our favourite restaurants, how do we bring that into the wedding?’” she says. “People want the day to feel like them.”

That philosophy shapes the entire creative process at Lettice Events. Rather than handing couples a lengthy set menu to choose from, the team approaches each wedding almost like designing a restaurant experience around the people hosting it.

The process begins with conversation. Holly and her planners want to understand how couples eat, host and celebrate in real life. Whether they love long Mediterranean lunches, relaxed sharing plates, elegant plated dinners or late-night martinis and chips.

“We really treat it like matchmaking,” Holly explains. “We pair couples with planners we think will best understand their style and the atmosphere they want to create.”

From there, menus are developed collaboratively, often pulling references from places that feel emotionally significant to the couple. One wedding might include dishes inspired by their favourite neighbourhood restaurant, while another may incorporate ingredients tied to family heritage or where they first met.

“One couple met on the Isle of Man and their family is sending fish over from there for the wedding,” Holly says. “That kind of detail makes the day feel so much more personal.”

Importantly, the food is never designed in isolation from the wider wedding aesthetic. Holly sees menu design, tablescaping, service style and flow as completely interconnected.

“The layout and presentation of food says so much about a couple,” she explains. “Whether it’s one long sharing table, silver-service dining or bowls of chips passed around late at night, all of it creates atmosphere.”

The restaurant influence behind Lettice is also highly intentional. Holly exclusively hires chefs from restaurant backgrounds rather than traditional catering kitchens, with team members coming from acclaimed names including Rochelle Canteen and St. John.

“We want it to feel more like going to your favourite restaurant than traditional wedding catering,” she says. “That’s really important to us.”

The result is food that feels elevated yet deeply personal. Luxurious without being overly formal, thoughtful without feeling contrived and entirely reflective of the people sitting at the table.

The problem with wedding trends

As someone working closely with modern couples every day, Holly has also witnessed how dramatically social media has changed weddings.

“Everyone’s seeing too much now,” she says. “There’s constant inspiration, constant trends and it’s made couples far more indecisive.”

While she acknowledges that trends can be inspiring, Holly encourages couples to think carefully about what will still feel authentic years later.

“We always try to bring people back to why they’re getting married in the first place,” she explains. “Not just what’s trending online.”

Interestingly, Holly believes the most meaningful parts of a wedding are often the least curated.

“The thing all my married friends say surprised them most was the ceremony,” she says. “It’s usually the part people spend the least amount of time obsessing over online, but it ends up being the thing they remember most.”

That emotional authenticity, she believes, is what couples should prioritise over spectacle.

What guests actually remember

Beyond aesthetics, Holly believes guest experience is one of the most overlooked elements of wedding planning, particularly when it comes to timing and flow.

“How the day feels is so important,” she says. “Hungry guests leave early. If timings run too late or there’s too much standing around, people feel it.”

One of the most common mistakes she sees is unrealistic schedules.

“If you know your dad’s speech is going to take 20 minutes, don’t schedule five,” she laughs. “You’re only setting yourself up for stress later.”

Instead, Holly encourages couples to think about weddings from the perspective of their guests.

“People remember how a wedding felt,” she says. “Not whether every single detail matched perfectly.”

The quiet moment Holly loves most

Despite producing beautifully elaborate weddings, Holly’s favourite moment is something surprisingly understated.

“It’s the first look into the reception space before guests come in,” she says. “The tables are perfect, the candles are lit, the music’s playing and the couple gets five quiet minutes to see everything come together.”

It’s a moment most guests never witness, but one Holly says often becomes incredibly emotional for couples.

“The next time they walk into that room, it’ll be chaos. Music, speeches, dancing, everyone waving napkins in the air,” she laughs. “But that first quiet moment is really special.”

In many ways, it perfectly encapsulates Holly’s entire approach to weddings: thoughtful rather than performative, emotional rather than excessive and deeply rooted in human connection.

Because for Holly, the best weddings aren’t necessarily the most extravagant. They’re the ones that feel unmistakably personal. Celebrations where every detail, from the menu to the atmosphere, tells a story only that couple could tell.

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