Somewhere along the way, weddings got permission to sprawl – and honestly, it’s one of the best developments in recent memory.
The idea that a celebration this significant should be squeezed into a single day and then tidily packed away has never made much sense to us. Engagements, hen and stag dos, welcome dinners, bridal showers – each one is its own occasion, its own memory in the making, and more and more couples are leaning into that fully rather than treating everything as a warm-up act for the main event.
Hog Roast Skipton is very much on board with this approach, and recently got to be part of one of those pre-wedding moments that sets exactly the right tone for everything that follows.
The evening before his big day, a groom gathered his family at The Manse, Broughton Sanctuary – and what a setting to do it. Three thousand acres of rolling countryside, ancient character, all the comfort you’d want for a proper family evening together. The Manse is the kind of place that feels removed from the noise of everything, where phones get put down and conversations actually happen. All it needed was food worth gathering around.
And yes, that’s where we came in.
Hog Roast Skipton’s Gourmet BBQ Menu felt like the natural fit for the occasion – generous, relaxed, the sort of spread that makes any gathering feel close-knit. Handmade beef burgers, gourmet sausages, Thai chicken kebabs and pulled pork all made an appearance, with Greek salad, creamy coleslaw and roasted baby new potatoes alongside. Guests avoiding meat had colourful vegetable kebabs – with halloumi added on request – served with tzatziki dip and flatbreads that disappeared considerably faster than even we’d expected.
There’s something quietly special about a pre-wedding family dinner. The anticipation of the next day is in the air but nobody is quite in event mode yet. It’s relaxed in a way the wedding itself, wonderful as it is, can never fully be and getting the food right for a moment like that matters more than people might think.
Hog Roast Skipton was glad to play a small part in this celebration – and we hope the big day that followed was everything they’d been looking forward to.