The morning of her wedding last March, Kyra Hodes woke up to pineapples and fish heads roasting over an open fire. It was around 6 a.m., and her caterer, Mark Stevens Roncoli of Open Fire Co., was already preparing the food.
As Ms. Hodes, a 31-year-old jewelry designer and silversmith from New Orleans, got ready, she watched the flames blaze ahead of the day’s (other) main event: a post-ceremony dinner cooked over the fire for her 145 guests.
Picking an open-fire setup was part choice and part necessity: The venue Ms. Hodes and her husband, Danny Weir, chose — Garrett Field in Slidell, La. — lacked an industrial kitchen.
For couples choosing less conventional venues, as the current trend goes, open-fire cooking offers a workaround to traditional catering kitchen needs. Sarah Anne Glover, the founder of the The Wild Kitchen in Park City, Utah, has produced weddings everywhere from Wyoming backyards to the Australian Outback (without running water) to the streets of downtown San Diego.
Such a setup can also create a one-stop shop. Linda Laestadius, the founder of Grounded, a Hudson Valley, N.Y.-based catering company that specializes in open-fire cooking, said “we come with everything.”
Such meals also serve those looking for more culinary adventure. “I’ve never really loved food at weddings,” said Lulu Wang, a filmmaker who was married in December 2024.
When Ms. Wang, who wrote and directed the 2019 film “The Farewell,” married Barry Jenkins, the writer and director of 2016’s “Moonlight,” in a backyard wedding in Los Angeles, “the idea of doing something open fire, where people got up and got food freshly cooked,” she said, “was very appealing.”
Ms. Wang and Mr. Jenkins, who are both from Miami, wanted a whole roasted pig in a wooden box, a Cuban tradition that felt similar to the Chinese practice of roasting a whole animal. (Ms. Wang is of Chinese descent.) Their chef, Balo Orozco, obliged, and Ms. Wang recounts being hand-fed crispy pork skin by friends throughout the night.
Julia Belamarich, a 33-year-old artist who lives in Queens, N.Y., featured a menu made over the flames by Russel Markus of the Brooklyn-based Essential Herbs, at her September wedding to Kyle Warfield in Tannersville, N.Y. “It just made it that much more exciting to eat the peppers or the squash that you just saw sitting in the coals of the fire,” she said.
The activity is part of the appeal. “As Gen Z is starting to come of age, there’s a big focus on interactivity and making things an experience,” said Lindsey Leichthammer, a wedding planner based in Winooski, Vt. Open-fire cooking offers an experiential touch point at the reception, and the chefs often find themselves fielding questions and having conversations with guests.
This catering option also appeals to the more conscious consumers, said James Gop, the founder of Heirloom Fire in Richmond, Mass. He described his clients as people who want to know where their money is going and that it’s making an impact, both from an events perspective and from an environmental standpoint. (He works with local farmers and sets up collection bins for compost and repurposing.)
The smoke also contributes to the olfactory experience of the day, an often-overlooked factor, especially in outdoor settings, said Ms. Leichthammer, the Vermont wedding planner. Guests can usually smell the fire upon arrival, and that scent carries throughout the ceremony into the reception, even before they see the blaze.
For Ms. Glover of Wild Kitchen, the spectacle is part of the overall appeal of this cooking method. These chefs see themselves as much a part of the wedding as the guests, preferring to set up within eyesight of the reception rather than being tucked behind white tents or indoors. (This alternative point of attention is also welcomed by brides like Ms. Hodes, who said she isn’t naturally comfortable in the spotlight.)
“We become entertainment in a way,” said Ms. Glover, an Australian native. “They have the ceremony, and then there’s a bit of time where the guests need to do something. So they come, and they observe.”
She added, “They call it ‘the bushman’s TV’ in Australia.”
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