The Morning After: A Wedding at Mar Lodge

August 15, 2026

A table set in daylight for a wedding weekend at a Highland lodge in Scotland

In short

Italian Banquet Company caters weddings at Mar Lodge, deep in the Cairngorms past Braemar, and at remote lodges and sporting estates across the Highlands.
A remote wedding is a residency, not a delivery. There is no supplier near Mar Lodge, so everything eaten across the whole weekend has to be planned and transported before the van leaves.
We cater the full weekend, not just the dinner — reception, cake, wedding dinner, and breakfast the following morning for everyone who stayed.
The breakfast is the meal people remember. It is the only part of a wedding weekend with no schedule attached, and almost nobody plans for it.
Everything is cooked on site, including pasta rolled and filled by hand that morning, by a full chef's brigade working in the lodge's own kitchen.

On cooking a wedding at Mar Lodge, deep in the Cairngorms — and why the meal that matters most is sometimes the one nobody planned for.

Most of what is written about wedding catering stops at the dinner. The speeches finish, the plates go back, the band starts, and as far as the story goes, the food is done. The chef packs the van. Everyone goes home.

But a wedding does not end at eleven o'clock, and neither, in our experience, does the eating. There is a second meal, and almost nobody plans for it: the breakfast the next morning, when the family who travelled the furthest come down in yesterday's shirts, and somebody's aunt makes the first pot of coffee, and the room that was full of speeches the night before is quiet, and slightly wrecked, and completely happy.

That meal is the one people talk about years later. This is the story of one of them, cooked high in the Cairngorms at Mar Lodge.

Getting there

Mar Lodge sits at the end of a road that keeps going long after you assume it must have stopped. You come up through Braemar, and then past Braemar, and the trees thin and the hills open out and the Dee runs alongside you the whole way, brown and fast over the stones. By the time the lodge itself appears you have driven far enough that the rest of Scotland has stopped feeling relevant.

It is one of the wildest places anyone gets married in this country. That is exactly why couples choose it — and it is also why a kitchen has to think differently before it arrives.

You cannot nip out for something you forgot at Mar Lodge. There is no supplier ten minutes down the road. Everything that will be eaten across the whole weekend has to be on the van when the van leaves, and it has to be the right things, in the right quantities, with enough spare that nobody notices there was ever a margin. Half of cooking at a remote venue is done days earlier, on paper, in a list.

We like that. There is a discipline to it that suits how we work anyway. When you cannot improvise your way out of a gap, you plan properly, and then you cook without anxiety. It is the same discipline behind the intimate weddings we cook in lodges around Loch Ness, behind the sporting weeks we cater at shooting lodges, and behind the destination work that has taken us as far as Romania.

A wedding that ran long

This was not a wedding built around a single sitting. It ran across the whole of the time everyone had together — a reception, a cake, a dinner, and then the next morning, breakfast for whoever had stayed.

That shape changes the job entirely. A one-meal wedding is a sprint: everything aims at one moment, one service, one set of plates leaving the pass at the same temperature at the same time. A wedding that runs long is something else. It is closer to cooking for a household than cooking for an event. You are not delivering a dinner, you are feeding people for a period of their lives, and the difference shows up in a hundred small ways.

You cook differently when you know you will see the same faces at breakfast. You notice who ate what. You notice the child who would not touch the main course but demolished the bread. You notice that somebody's father quietly asked for a second helping of the pasta and did not want to make a fuss about it, and you make sure there is more of it the following day.

By the second morning, you are not the caterer any more. You are just the person who cooks. That is a much better job.

What we actually brought

People sometimes expect that a wedding this far into the hills means a scaled-down menu. It is the opposite. Remote venues are exactly where a travelling kitchen earns its place, because the alternative is not a grander caterer — the alternative is nothing at all, or a long convoy of cars going back down the glen to find dinner.

So the pasta was made by hand, the way it always is with us — rolled, filled and shaped on site rather than carried up frozen in a box. There is a moment in every remote job when the flour comes out onto a borrowed worktop in a kitchen you have never stood in before, and the whole thing suddenly becomes ordinary again — because that part never changes, whatever the postcode.

The antipasti came out generous, because a reception in the Cairngorms means people who have been outside in the wind and want feeding, not garnishing. There was cake. There was dinner, properly served, at a proper table.

And then in the morning there was breakfast, which is the part of this wedding I have thought about most since.

Why the breakfast matters

An Italian household does not treat the morning after a celebration as an afterthought. It treats it as the last chapter of the same meal. The night before was for everybody — the speeches, the formality, the good clothes. The morning is for the people who are actually yours.

It is the only part of a wedding weekend with no schedule attached to it. Nobody is being announced. Nobody is being photographed. The couple come down married, which they were technically the night before but do not seem to have felt until now. And everybody sits and eats and nobody is in a hurry, and the whole thing has a softness to it that the wedding day itself, for all its beauty, does not.

If you have cooked the dinner, you have fed the occasion. If you have cooked the breakfast, you have fed the family. Those are not the same thing, and I would take the second one every time.

Cooking in the Cairngorms

There is a version of this work that treats a venue like Mar Lodge as a logistical problem to be solved. Distance, access, kit, timings. And it is those things — you would be a fool to pretend otherwise.

But you are also cooking in one of the most extraordinary landscapes in Europe, for people who chose to come all this way precisely because it is not convenient. That choice deserves to be met. A couple who bring everyone they love to the middle of the Cairngorms are not asking for the same wedding that would have worked in a hotel outside a city. They are asking for something that could only have happened here.

The food should feel the same way. Not fussier — better. Cooked on site, in the room, with the windows open onto the hills.

We packed up slowly, as we always do. Down the long road, past Braemar, the Dee going the other way this time.

Frequently asked questions

Does Italian Banquet Company cater weddings at Mar Lodge?
Yes. We cater weddings at Mar Lodge in the Cairngorms and at remote lodges and estates across the Highlands, cooking on site in the lodge's own kitchen with a full chef's brigade.

How do you cater a wedding at a venue with no nearby supplier?
By planning it days in advance. Everything that will be eaten across the whole stay is worked out, sourced and transported before the van leaves, with enough spare that nobody notices there was a margin. At a remote venue you cannot improvise your way out of a gap, so you plan properly and then cook without anxiety.

Do you cater the whole wedding weekend or only the dinner?
The whole weekend, where the couple want it — reception, cake, wedding dinner and breakfast the following morning for guests who stayed. A weekend wedding is closer to cooking for a household than cooking for an event.

Why does the morning-after breakfast matter?
Because it is the only part of a wedding weekend with no schedule attached, and almost nobody plans for it. In an Italian household the morning after a celebration is the last chapter of the same meal. It is very often the meal guests talk about years later.

Is the food cooked on site at a remote lodge?
Yes, including fresh pasta rolled, filled and shaped by hand on the morning of service. Nothing arrives frozen or pre-plated.

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