@iacisrmma
I must really travel in separate circles. In my 60+ years I’ve never seen anything served at the chasson’s tisch beyond cakes and ‘finger food’ type hors d’oeuvres, never something such as beef stew., fresh fruit and drinks.
As I said we made 2 chasunahs in the past 16 moths and the food at the tisch and the food at the kallah’s reception was exactly the same: cakes. fresh fruit platters, hors d’oeuvres both hot and cold and drinks. Nothing that required a utensil bigger than a cake fork and could be eaten on a 5″ plate.
This food is not a meal.
Caveat: we have never invited people just for kabbalos panim and Chupah, a guest is invited for the entire simcha. We also never have suffered univited guests/crashers….that’s part of living OOT (the ganz olim doesn’t just show up because they heard there’s a simcha and on the pretext of wishing a mazel tov they expect to eat and drink).