All the glitz and glamour of a fabulous wedding and the best planning in the world for your wedding reception will not excuse bad food. People hold fast to tradition to serve certain items, but if the truth be told there really are no hard and fast rules for wedding food.
Here are some hints about what food to choose for your wedding reception. It is helpful to know the kinds of foods you can serve for formal, semi formal and casual wedding receptions. It is also useful to have ideas on what to serve for wedding reception breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
A wedding is supposed to be a time of great enjoyment and celebration. Find yourself a qualified and reputed wedding caterer to suggest menu ideas. Make sure you sample their offerings to find out how good they really are. You can also
check references to see whether the catering company is all it claims to be.
Formal, sit down dinners in the best wedding tradition are one of the biggest expense items on your wedding list. You need furniture, table settings, table centerpieces and decoration, a minimum of 3 courses comprising soup, entrée and main course, coffee and wedding cake not to mention drinks including dinner wines. Then you have the wait staff to add to your bill. Quite an expense!
You can also treat your guests to a splendid buffet dinner beginning with cocktails and moving on to the dinner itself. You can have dancing afterward, followed by the cake cutting ceremony, tossing the bouquet and any other traditions you wish to include. An excellent way to draw out the entire evening; you can fill it to overflowing with celebration and good cheer.
Have you heard of the fork buffet? It falls somewhere between the formal dinner service and finger buffet. On offer will be a spread of hot (chicken wings, cutlets, rolls, etc.) and cold food items (prawns, lobster meat, crab meat salad, chicken salad, etc.) laid out buffet style for your guests to help themselves. Then the guests sit at formal tables to eat dinner. You still get to have the formal table settings and seating plan combined with a more relaxed eating style.
How about having the caterer set up a variety of food stalls as some of the big hotels do? It is very exciting for the
guests to move around informally checking out what‟s on offer at each food station. This will help solve the problem of what to feed your guests who will have individual preferences for sure. Asian and Far Eastern foods generally go down well and you can add a pasta station to the mix for added variety.
Finger buffets are a very relaxed, informal reception style where all types of finger foods are served. Guests simply tuck in and there are no formal tables and confusion over which fork to use. Canapés, pastries, rolls, dips, small sandwiches, open face sandwiches, cheeses and more can be set out for guests to indulge themselves. This type of reception cannot be dragged out over an entire evening simply because your guests cannot stand for so long. It may be a better idea to provide tables with less formal settings for people to sit and eat in comfort.
This type of food style is also referred to as a cocktail reception. If you don‟t plan on having a very long reception, cut out the tables and let people move around freely. Bear in mind that people really load up on drinks at this type of reception. What you save on food could very well be spent on drinks!
Wedding reception food runs the gamut from picnics to barbeques, breakfast, brunch and afternoon tea. If you have a themed wedding the kind of meal you serve will need to be blended into the mix. Make sure to cater to children and elderly people and request guests to inform you in advance about any special diets or allergies.
While people loudly declare that they come to wedding receptions to help the bride and groom celebrate a major event in their lives, the kind of food served at the reception is still very important. Focus on making sure your guests have a great time and you will have no problems with the food!
