Wedding Catering Melbourne
Indian wedding catering for engagement ceremonies, mehndi nights and reception feasts — menus built for 50 guests or 500, without compromising on flavour.
Melbourne Wedding Caterers, Not A Venue With A Kitchen
Weddings are where Tandoori Flames does its best work. We have catered engagement ceremonies, mehndi nights, sangeet celebrations and full receptions across Melbourne — in function centres, marquees, community halls, hotel ballrooms and backyards. Because we are a catering company rather than a venue, your wedding is not squeezed into someone else’s room or someone else’s menu. We bring a production kitchen’s worth of capability to wherever you are getting married, and we build the menu around your families rather than around a fixed package. If you still need a venue, three of them are ours — Ultima Function Centre in Keilor East, Fleur Weddings & Events in Fawkner and Amora. Booking venue and catering together means one team, one run sheet and one point of contact.- Engagement, mehndi, sangeet & reception catering
- Tasting before you commit
- Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free & halal as standard
- Live tandoor station & chef’s table options
- Coordination with your venue or wedding planner
- 50 to 500+ guests
Wedding Menus We Build
A starting point, not a fixed list. Every menu is built around your guest list, your budget and the dietary needs in the room.
Arrival Canapés
Paneer tikka, Chicken 65, Mini samosa, Pani puri shots, Lamb seekh, Rice paper rolls
Reception Mains
Butter chicken, Goat rogan josh, Lamb handi, Malai kofta, Dal makhani, Black pork curry
Rice & Breads
Hyderabadi dum biryani, Saffron pilaf, Garlic naan, Butter roti, Kashmiri rice, Appam
Sweets & Stations
Gulab jamun, Shahi kulfi, Live tandoor, Chaat bar, Dessert table, Mithai plattersThree Melbourne Venues Of Our Own — Or We Come To Yours
Tandoori Flames is a catering company first. We own and operate three event venues across Melbourne, and we also cater your wedding at any venue, marquee, hall, park or private home you choose.Ultima Function Centre
Keilor East — eight event spaces and capacity to 800 guests. Catered in-house by our own team. Visit site →Fleur Weddings & Events
Fawkner — a glamorous single-room reception for up to 400 guests. Catered in-house by our own team. Visit site →Amora
Melbourne — our third event space, for clients who want a hotel-grade setting. Catered in-house by our own team.Planning A Wedding Menu With Us
Start with your date, guest count and the events you are catering — engagement, mehndi, reception or all three. We send an itemised quote within 24 hours covering menu, service style, staffing and equipment. Next comes the tasting. This is where most couples make the real decisions: spice levels, how generous the vegetarian spread needs to be, whether a live station earns its place. Once the menu is locked we agree a run sheet with you or your coordinator, confirm final numbers about a week out, and on the day our team arrives early, serves to schedule and packs down clean.Melbourne-Wide, From Our South Kingsville Kitchen
Our production kitchen is in South Kingsville and our vans go everywhere — the inner west, the CBD, the bayside suburbs, the north and the outer west. Any delivery charge is quoted up front, never added later.
South Kingsville · Williamstown · Newport · Yarraville · Altona North · Point Cook · Hoppers Crossing · Tarneit · West Footscray
Melbourne weddings pull guests from across the metro, so venue choice shapes the whole logistics plan. Families in Point Cook, Tarneit, Hoppers Crossing and Werribee usually want a western or northern reception site to keep travel down, while CBD and Docklands venues suit interstate and overseas guests who stay in the city. Temple ceremonies often sit well away from the reception space, so the gap between sites needs managing. Peak season runs October to March, and Saturdays through that window book earliest. Winter weddings are easier to secure but need indoor ceremony contingency, since rain closes outdoor options across Williamstown and Essendon with no notice.
Wedding Catering In Melbourne — Your Questions Answered
We cater Indian weddings from around one hundred guests to five hundred, and larger at our own Ultima Function Centre which holds up to eight hundred. Staffing, equipment and service style scale with the number. A three hundred guest reception typically runs a staged buffet with a live tandoor station, while smaller weddings can be plated or fully served.
Yes, we run tastings for wedding bookings so you taste the dishes before the menu is locked. The tasting is where spice levels get set and dishes get swapped. Bring the parents and anyone else with an opinion. Tastings are arranged by appointment and are best done around two to three months before the wedding date.
Yes, we prepare Jain, satvik and no-onion-no-garlic dishes as separate cooks with dedicated utensils and serving equipment. These are religious requirements and we treat them that way, not as a substitution. Give us the guest count for each requirement at quoting stage so the quantities and the buffet layout are planned properly from the start.
Yes, we regularly cater the full wedding sequence — mehndi or sangeet, ceremony lunch and reception — with a different menu for each. Booking the whole sequence together is easier to coordinate than piecing it out to separate suppliers. The menus should differ deliberately, so guests attending every event are not served the same dishes three times.
Book six to twelve months ahead for a Saturday wedding in peak season, which in Melbourne runs roughly October to March. Popular dates and auspicious dates in that window go first. If your date is in winter or mid-week you will have more flexibility, but earlier is always better once the venue is confirmed.
Final numbers are confirmed about two weeks before the wedding, and that figure is what we cook and staff for. Small increases after that can usually be absorbed; large jumps cannot, because ordering and crew rostering are already locked. Keep us updated as RSVPs come in rather than saving one big revision for the end.
Yes, and multi-day weddings are standard work for us. We build one plan covering every function, with separate menus, timings and staffing for each. Running the same team across days means equipment stays on site where the venue allows it and the crew already knows the room. Confirm all dates together at booking so staffing is reserved as one block.
We cook it separately, in dedicated pans, with separate serving utensils. Satvik requirements usually apply to the ceremony day only, so the kitchen runs two streams across the wedding. Tell us at booking rather than in the final week, because it changes base gravies, stock and the prep schedule. We can also keep jain and satvik items physically apart on the buffet.
We run both. Multicultural weddings often pair a north Indian spread with Sri Lankan, Fijian, Nepalese, Italian or Lebanese dishes, and the buffet is organised so each side finds food it recognises. Decide the balance early — roughly how many dishes from each tradition — so the layout reads clearly and neither cuisine ends up as a token section.
We cover Indian sweets and plated desserts; tiered wedding cakes come from a specialist baker. Many couples bring their own cake and we handle cutting, portioning and service with the dessert release. A mithai table, kulfi or jalebi station works alongside it. Tell us the cake size and cutting time so the dessert sequence does not clash with it.
Plan on forty-five to sixty minutes for the full room with a double-sided buffet and enough serving points. Single-sided lines double that and create a queue that eats into the dance floor. For 400 guests we split into at least two stations, sometimes four, and release tables in waves. The venue layout determines how many points fit, so share the floor plan early.
Nine to twelve months ahead for peak-season Saturdays, and longer if your date falls in the October to March run. Tasting and menu detail can come later — what matters first is reserving the date and the team. If you are also looking at venues, booking catering and venue in the same conversation avoids the common clash of a secured room with no available caterer.
Indian Wedding Catering Across Melbourne
We cater Indian and multicultural weddings in Melbourne from around one hundred guests up to five hundred. Most of our wedding work is Punjabi and North Indian, with regular Sri Lankan, Fijian-Indian, South Indian and mixed-culture weddings where one side wants butter chicken and the other wants something entirely different. We cook both properly. Our team is based in South Kingsville and we travel across the metro area, including to our own venues at Keilor East, Fawkner and in the city.
An Indian wedding is not one meal. It is a sequence — often a mehndi or sangeet earlier in the week, a ceremony lunch, then a reception that runs five or six hours with roaming food, stations, a buffet and dessert. We quote the whole sequence if you want it, or just the reception. Either way the menu gets built around your families’ tastes and dietary rules, not off a fixed package. Jain, vegan, no-onion-no-garlic and halal requirements are routine for us.
Tandoori Flames MelbourneTalk To A Human
Call 0401 338 005 any day between 9am and 8pm, or send the form and we will come back within 24 hours.
Get An Itemised QuoteWhat Separates Wedding Work From Everything Else
Two families, two palates
Multicultural weddings often need a menu that reads as authentic to both sides. We handle that by splitting the buffet into clearly identified sections rather than fusing everything into a compromise. Mild options sit alongside properly spiced dishes so neither family feels the food was watered down for the other.
Dietary rules, not preferences
Jain, satvik, vegan and halal requirements are religious obligations, not menu choices. We cook those dishes separately, use dedicated utensils and serving tongs, and label the line so guests do not have to interrogate a staff member. Tell us the counts and the rules at the quoting stage, not the week before.
Service that fits the run sheet
A reception has fixed moments: entrance, speeches, first dance, cake. Food has to land between them. We build our service times off your run sheet, hold mains until speeches finish, and keep roaming entrees moving during photos so guests are not standing around with empty hands.
A Reception Menu For Three Hundred Guests
A typical Melbourne Indian wedding reception menu moves through four stages across the night, with vegetarian and non-vegetarian weighted to your guest list.
Roaming canapes during photos
Kale & Spinach Pakoras, Chicken 65, Veg Spring Rolls, Chilly Fish, Gobi Manchurian
Live tandoor station
Chicken Reshmi Kebab, Lamb Chapli Kebab, Tandoori Prawns, Paneer Tikka, Chicken Kasturi Boti, Tangri Kebab
Buffet mains
Shahi Murg, Lamb Shank, Punjabi Malai Kofta, Methi Malai Matar, Dal Makhani, Veg Biryani, Coconut Rice, Kashmiri Naan, Lachaa Prantha, Raita
Dessert
Gulab Jamun, Paan Kulfi, Matka Kulfi, Sizzling Chocolate Brownie, Ice Cream Platter
A starting point, not a fixed list. Swap any dish at no extra charge — the menu is built around your guest list, your budget and the dietary needs in the room.
How We Plan A Wedding From Enquiry To Reception
First conversation covers date, venue, guest count and the religious or cultural requirements. From there we draft a menu and a quote. A tasting follows once you are close to committing — you taste the actual dishes, adjust spice levels and swap dishes in and out. Many couples bring parents to the tasting, which is sensible, because parents usually have strong views about the dal. We then lock the menu roughly six weeks out and final numbers around two weeks before the date.
In the final fortnight we work off your run sheet with the venue, the MC and the photographer. We need to know when the couple enters, how long speeches will take and when the cake is cut, because every one of those moments stops food service. On the day our crew bumps in early, sets the buffet line and stations, and runs service in stages so the back of a five hundred guest room is not eating forty minutes after the front. Pack-down is ours.
Four Packages You Can Order As-Is
These are the packages we publish, exactly as they are ordered. Every one can be swapped dish for dish at no extra charge.
Veg Banquet
Fully vegetarian, the package we run most often for temple functions, Jain and Hindu ceremonies.
- Entrée: Veg Pakora, Aloo Tikki
- Mains: Malai Kofta, Dal Makhani
- Served with: Saffron Rice, Salad, Raita, Plain Naan
Silver Banquet
Our entry package for corporate lunches and smaller private functions.
- Entrée: Chaat Papri, Veg Manchurian
- Mains: Butter Chicken, Dal Makhani
- Served with: Saffron Rice, Salad, Raita, Plain Naan
- Dessert: Pista Kulfi
Gold Banquet
The most-ordered wedding and engagement package — three mains and two desserts.
- Entrée: Aloo Tikki Chaat, Veg Manchurian, Chicken Tikka
- Mains: Butter Chicken, Dal Makhani, Rogan Josh
- Served with: Saffron Rice, Salad, Raita, Plain Naan & Roti
- Dessert: Pista Kulfi, Gulab Jamun
Platinum Banquet
Full reception service — pre-starters, five mains, desserts and drinks.
- Pre-starters: Hara Bhara Kebab, Amritsari Fish
- Entrée: Tandoori Chicken, Seekh Kebab, Onion Bhaji
- Mains: Butter Chicken, Dal Makhani, Rogan Josh, Paneer Balti, Palak Kofta
- Served with: Saffron Rice, Salad, Raita, Plain Naan & Roti
- Dessert: Pista Kulfi, Gulab Jamun
- Drinks: Soft drinks, Juice
Every package can be swapped dish for dish at no extra charge. Swap Rogan Josh for Lamb Korma, drop the chicken entirely, add a second vegetarian main — it is your menu, the package is just a sensible starting point.
Wedding Functions, Timing And Food Format
Indian and multicultural weddings run across several functions, each with its own timing and the food format that actually suits it.
| Function | Typical timing | Food format that works | Planning note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engagement or roka | Afternoon or early evening | Canapes then a compact buffet | Often the first time both families eat together — keep spice levels moderate |
| Mehndi or sangeet | Late afternoon into night | Live stations and grazing, served over hours | Guests eat while seated on the floor or moving — avoid long queues |
| Haldi or pithi | Morning | Light breakfast and snack platters | Short function, messy with turmeric — food served away from the ritual area |
| Ceremony day | Morning to early afternoon | Vegetarian lunch, often strictly no onion or garlic | Priest timing drives everything — service must flex by thirty minutes either way |
| Reception | Evening | Full buffet or seated courses with speeches built in | Largest head count, latest finish, most complex dietary mix |
| Day-after brunch | Mid-morning | Simple buffet for a reduced guest list | Interstate guests only — numbers usually drop by half from the reception |
Wedding Catering Mistakes Couples Make Twice
Treating all functions as one brief
Couples negotiate one menu and apply it across four events. Each function has a different guest mix, a different duration and different ritual constraints. The ceremony lunch may need to be strictly vegetarian while the reception is not. Brief each function separately, even if one caterer runs them all, so quantities and spice levels match the actual room.
Letting speeches drift into service
Speeches that start late collide with hot food. Food held for a long open mic loses quality and the kitchen cannot recover it. Set a hard start for the speech block, give the MC a running sheet, and agree with the caterer which course or buffet release follows. Thirty minutes of slip is survivable; ninety is not.
Underestimating family guest numbers
Indian weddings routinely exceed the RSVP count as relatives bring extended family. Build a buffer into the catering count rather than the venue capacity — running out of food at 9pm is worse than paying for extra portions. Confirm final numbers at the agreed deadline but discuss a contingency range at booking so the kitchen can scale.
Forgetting the vendor and family meals
Photographers, videographers, DJs, priests and makeup artists all need feeding, and so do the family members working through service. That is often fifteen to thirty extra meals nobody counted. List vendors in the brief, decide when they eat — usually just before or just after guest service — and where they sit.
Get An Itemised Quote Within 24 Hours
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