Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Wediquette: Having Entree Options at Your Wedding

Question: We're only serving one entree at our reception, but there will be a few vegetarians/special dietary needs people in our group. If there's no meal selection option on the reply card, how does one handle this? Should you include a line on the reply card to contact us for special dietary needs? Just include it on the website? Or will special needs/vegetarian guests just know?

If you've opted to have a single choice for entree for your reception - there's no need to give your attending guests an advance notice that a) you're only serving one entree and b) that they can get something else if they 'require' it due to dietary restrictions. When your guests sit down at the reception, there should be a menu card that lists what everyone will be eating that evening. At the bottom of it in very small print, have a line that says "Vegetarian Choice Available" or something to that affect {its called having a silent option}. Prior to your wedding, when you finalized the menu with the catering company or chef, there should have been a discussion regarding special meals in case any of your guests cannot eat the entree choice. The chef will be prepared to handle these, so when a waiter comes around to take drink orders, a guest can request the vegetarian meal.

It is essential to have a vegetarian option available to guests that are unable to eat your entree - in this day and age, people's eating habits are very personal and just imagine how annoyed you'd be if you went to a wedding and the hosts didn't have a choice for you to eat so you can't eat dinner? Its common courtesy especially since more and more people are choosing for health or diet reasons to eat differently. Or, they are like me and if the only choice is fish {some of which I am allergic to} I have to have the vegetarian meal otherwise the reception won't go on when I have an allergic reaction!

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