Down-home" food such as pies and cobblers are increasingly being featured at weddings

AS the wedding season gets into full swing, many brides and bridegrooms are taking a decidedly down-home approach. Bring on the grilled steak, sweet potato fries and Rice Krispie treats (not to mention the checkered tablecloths). It’s enough to have the most sophisticated bride scrambling for her grandmother’s Betty Crocker cookbook.

The trend is most striking in Los Angeles, where the combination of money and show business has traditionally led to weddings as lavishly produced as any period-costume epic. This year, fewer guests will dine under crystal chandeliers or balls made of roses hanging from a gossamer-covered ceiling. Indeed, some Angelenos are taking the homespun ethos a step further, holding their wedding festivities in their own homes, or renting someone else’s.

But authenticity, it seems, comes at a price.

While it stands to reason that a backyard supper or a catered affair at home might be cheaper than a hotel soiree, for many it actually costs just as much or more. Casual food is not necessarily a bargain, as restaurant diners from coast to coast can attest.

“It’s not any cheaper to make a cobbler or a homemade pie than to bake a cake,” said Peggy Dark, a caterer and a co-founder of the Kitchen in Pasadena, Calif.

The difference, it turns out, is mainly appearance, as newlyweds (and their parents) are wary of flaunting their fortunes. “No one wants to be vulgar,” said Susan Holland, a party planner who has arranged weddings in Los Angeles. “No one wants the perception of abundance. A lot of people, their friends don’t have what they used to and they don’t want it thrown in their faces.”

For Shannon Jones of Los Angeles, the new thinking is indeed a sign of these times. She is having her reception — an outdoor supper for 200 — at a 1920s estate in Montecito on July 25. Ms. Jones, 26, and her fiancé, Michael Malik, 31, wanted to have what she called “a big summer backyard dinner,” much like the weekend parties that have become common among her peers.

“More people are giving up dinner at Spago for a casual dinner at home with friends,” she said.

So she skipped the once-popular pots of caviar and lobster tails, and decided to serve childhood favorites instead: grilled hanger steak marinated in herbs and home-baked peach cobbler. (There will be no wedding cake — another traditional must-have many brides are skipping.)

Food will be dished up on platters and passed from person to person; bottles of wine will be put out on the tables so guests can serve themselves. The seating, too, will be picnic style — long tables covered in burlap.

Despite the simple menu and surroundings, though, her wedding will cost more than if she had chosen a hotel. (She declined to say how much, although she described the amount as “sizable.”) What she is hoping for, she said, is an experience that, despite months of preparation, seems unfussy and authentic.

“It doesn’t seem right to have something so elaborate,” Ms. Jones said. “I really want people eating and drinking as much as they want. I don’t want a big show, just the best backyard party ever.”

Ms. Dark, the caterer, said clients are requesting cheaper cuts of meat that can be simply seasoned and grilled — flank and skirt steak, particularly — or fish stews, like bouillabaisse, for beach weddings. And instead of serving mounds of grapes with hunks of Cheddar or Brie, one couple is devoting a whole cheese course to different types of mozzarella. (One creative caterer in Austin, Tex., is serving snow cones.)

This summer, it’s all about the French fry. Ms. Dark fries them twice in a deep fryer, then serves individual portions in paper cones. Wolfgang Puck’s catering team serves them with jalapeño poppers.

Mindy Weiss, a Los Angeles party specialist, asks caterers to fill dishes with fries — including sweet potato strings — which are placed on the tables during dinner. Even in carb-conscious Los Angeles, Ms. Weiss said, “There is nobody who won’t grab a French fry.”

Downgrades have hit décor, too, from crystal chandeliers to material-draped walls. Still, the final tab is often head-slappingly high: The cost of a wedding planned this summer by Ms. Weiss or Jo Gartin, two of Los Angeles’s most sought-after wedding specialists, is as high or higher than last year, or about $150,000 to $200,000, according to the two planners.

Three weeks ago, a client of Ms. Weiss decided to spray-paint his backyard lawn dark green before his daughter’s wedding, to cover up spots where the family’s dogs had urinated. “It looked like brown polka dots,” Ms. Weiss said. That was on top of the $100,000 he spent fixing fountains in the yard.

“I have clients who have a lot of money, but they are more about not looking like they have a lot of money,” said Ms. Weiss, whose celebrity wedding clients have included Gwen Stefani and Heidi Klum. “They think doing something at home or at an estate is going to seem less flashy, less over the top. They don’t want people leaving their party and saying, ‘They spent how much on that wedding?’ ”

Despite the cost, people like being at home — or at least in a homey environment. Last September, Scott Sanders, a producer of the Broadway musical “The Color Purple,” decided to have his rehearsal dinner for 40 at a friend’s house near Beverly Hills. Both he and his partner, Brad Lamm, were meeting some of each other’s family members for the first time, so they wanted to put people at ease.

“We wanted to do something that felt like a party, something casual,” he said.

Casual indeed. “We did tequila shots,” Mr. Sanders said with a giggle. “Basically we took the idea of doing a Southwest meal and we did it with fresh ingredients. The price was about the same, but the quality was better than at a restaurant. And everyone got along great.”

Was it the free-flowing tequila? Or perhaps the barbecued chicken, grilled vegetables, pizza and brightly colored cupcakes the couple served? Mr. Sanders surmised that the comfort food made everyone, well, more comfortable.

Caterers agree. “I’m all for people dieting,” Ms. Dark said. “But people are not going to want a salad with olive oil on it.”

The same holds true for the afterparty, a staple of the Los Angeles wedding. Once it was a casual get-together at which the bride and bridegroom could kick off their shoes after a long day, but this year it has taken on the importance of the reception itself. Now many have the studied air of a meticulously fashioned spur-of-the-moment affair.

In April, Brittany Messmer was married in Palm Desert, Calif., at a golf club where she had met her husband seven years ago. “My dad gave me and my mom a hard time, saying we decided to have the wedding of the century during a depression,” said Ms. Messmer, 24. She said she sought “simple beauty” in keeping with the recessionary mood.

Of course, “simple” is subjective. The day started with tea sandwiches and cookies before cocktails. Her parents hired a dozen members of the University of Southern California marching band to play a few songs. The evening ended with sparklers and fireworks. Ms. Messmer said the festivities, arranged by Ms. Weiss, cost more than the planner’s average wedding.

Of the 250 people who attended, about 60 stayed for the afterparty. There, as a disc jockey played hip-hop and R & B tunes for three hours, waiters brought out overflowing plates of bite-size burgers, mini grilled cheese sandwiches, French fries (of course) and warm chocolate chip cookies with iced milk shooters.

“They absorb the alcohol,” Ms. Weiss said of the late-night snacks. “I always say to the photographer, ‘Don’t go home.’ ” That’s because it is then that the camera can capture what is perhaps the most authentic moment of the night.

At many weddings, the bride “has dieted for months, and there she is on the floor,” Ms. Weiss said with a husky laugh, “pigging out, a Krispy Kreme doughnut shoved in her mouth.”