Wedding Reception Food and Drink
Choosing menus and drinks for your buffet or sit-down wedding meal is not easy. Many couples, though conscious of how varied their guests' tastes in food might be, desperately seek to avoid the 'rubber chicken' type of dull, dreary menu that so often is chosen by large groups for precisely that reason.
There are two points to make here. One is remember whose wedding it is; pick a menu that will please you and your immediate family and friends. Don't feel obliged to choose something you happen to hate, just because it's widely acceptable to others. The second, is that there need not be more than a few definite no-nos unless your religion or culture has specific rules. The following points should, if observed, satisfy most guests at a modern wedding.
- No pork; some religions don't allow it.
- No shellfish; some religions don't allow it, and many people have shellfish allergies.
- Include a vegetarian alternative to starter and main course.
- Avoid very heavily spiced food unless there are cooler alternatives available.
- Avoid alcohol, obviously, if your religion does not allow it.
- If alcohol is permitted ensure you offer plenty of non-alcoholic drinks for those who prefer them and/or are driving.
Sit-down meals
Sit-down meals are often favoured by families and certainly offer guests a more substantial option, but these meals do have their problems. Not only are you obliged to arrange seating plans for sit-down meals, but also the meal concerned is more difficult to arrange.
Many families send out menus with the wedding invitations, asking guests to specify what choice they would like from a selection of options. The returns from this exercise are particularly helpful because they will tell you and your caterers what should be allowed for across conventional tastes, vegetarian options, religiously-orientated options, etc. With large wedding receptions, accommodating everyone's whims can be quite a daunting task, but most wedding caterers are used to that and can cope.
Buffet style meals
Although less formal, buffet-style meals probably are the preferable option when you have an eclectic mix of guests. With this format you avoid the extra fiddle-factor of asking people to choose their menus beforehand, or the need for you to make painful choices of what to serve at a sit-down dinner. Here you can offer a far wider selection of dishes amongst which nearly everyone will find something they like. The preparation and serving of a buffet meal is also simpler (and therefore should be cheaper) than a sitdown meal for a large number of guests.
Barbecues
These are a popular choice for summer weddings, but remember that weather can be an issue here, especially in the good old UK . Most professional venues will allow for the possibility of wet weather, but if you do your reception at home or in another private place, find a way to get the barbecue devices under (non-inflammable) cover if the need arises. The other important thing to remember about barbecues is that the classic foods we cook on them here in the UK are not normally vegetarian-friendly, and are probably not religion-friendly for a multi-cultural guest list. That's not the end of the world though. Within the barbecue choices you can include some delicious veggie kebabs and other things.
Other options
Why stick to traditional meals? You can take a leaf out of the North Americans' book and do a wedding brunch ... a meal I dearly love and am known to stuff myself with when over on the west side of The Pond. This is especially useful if you want to save money by having a morning wedding - in the UK it's not a particularly popular time, hence lower costs. Brunch can be anything from croissants and scrambled eggs to steak dinners with vegetables and gravy - in fact, whatever you fancy. What distinguishes brunch from other meals is that it (in theory) should be an amalgam of breakfast and lunch, and it takes place somewhere between mid to late morning and around 2pm.
Another wedding feast alternative - which also saves on cost - is afternoon tea. Here you can go ballistic with dainty sandwiches, gorgeous little cakes, scones with clotted cream and delicious preserves, all of which lead nicely up to the wedding cake.
Then, of course, you have the option of doing a reception that consists of drinks and canapes only. This can save a lot of money, but can also seem a bit tight-fisted. There is a way around this, though. A great friend of mine who used to organise drinks parties for corporate clients came up with the brilliant idea of serving a range of canapes which mirror a four-course meal. In other words the first trays of canapes consisted of fish and seafood based titbits plus crudites and dips, bits of melon and parma ham, etc. The next round consisted of canapes based on roasted meats, roasted vegetables and other ideas cribbed from main courses. Then followed canapes which were all sweet - fruit, chocolate, cheesecake and other such delicacies. Finally there was a round of cheese-based tasties. Yum, yum
