7 Foods Not To Serve at A Wedding
Of all of the decisions surrounding a wedding, one of the most fraught is what food to serve. After all, catering costs can eat up half of a wedding budget. And when you're dropping that many grands, you probably feel like you should get something, well, grand.
Between attending the nuptials of college, high school, and work friends, I have become acutely aware of the obstacles and limitations that wedding caterers face: makeshift kitchens in tents, feeding 200 people at the same moment, trying to please a diverse crowd, and more. These factors make preparing certain foods inadvisable--and others downright impossible.
Here's a list of foods to avoid at your wedding, at all costs:
1. Risky Foods: Even if you and your betrothed fell in love over a plate of steak tartare (pictured above), a wedding is not the place for raw meat or eggs, or unpasteurized cheese. Are you trying to create a wave of food poisoning? And while you're at it, let's stay away from the fugu, too, okay?
2. "Production" Foods: It might seem like a nice idea to serve things that require individual preparation at a wedding, like table-side guacamole, but it's not. Even pro caterers will have a hard time getting the food made properly and delivered to the guests in a timely fashion. Plus, wouldn't you rather the guests watch your first dance than a Benihana-style sideshow? And another thing: no Baked Alaska, no Cherries Jubilee...basically, nothing on fire. And that includes flaming Jagerbombs (if you want all the groomsmen to keep their pants on).
3. Anything Too Exotic: You might be an adventurous eater, but pull a group of your nearest and dearest together, and, chances are, some of them won't share your sense of daring. There are plenty of universally appealing options that will sell better than fish-fat canapes. And, another thing: It might be trendy these days to eat the usually-discarded meat parts (like the entrails and brains), but at weddings, offal is, well, awful.
4. A Five-Course Meal: Wedding guests want to mingle and dance, not be stuck in their seats gorging themselves for hours. Unless Jacques Pepin himself is cooking the wedding meal, the food isn't going to outshine the happy couple (and who would want that, anyway?). Keep it to three courses or less, and give everyone time to shake their tailfeathers without being weighed down.
5. Nothing: Conversely, all that chatting and grooving requires fuel (plus, people tend to indulge in a cocktail or six at weddings). Even if your reception doesn't fall at a mealtime, make sure there are at least a few tasty morsels to sop up the booze and put some gas in the tanks.
6. Theme Foods: Having good food is always a better idea than matching the hors d'oeuvres to your color palette. If your heart is set on an Arabian-themed reception with fire-breathers, but your caterers aren't well-versed in that cuisine, the vibe is going to end up more bellyache than belly dance. And if you were thinking about serving whole turkey legs at your Renaissance fair-themed wedding, well... just don't have a Renaissance fair-themed wedding.
7. Overly Elaborate Foods: Do you really need four different garnishes for that salmon filet? The more elements that go into a plate of food, the longer it will take the caterers to get it assembled and out to the tables (which translates to room-temperature salmon). At weddings, the best meals are those made without a lot of bells and whistles. Keep it simple and your food will be all for better (and none "for worse").
Hopefully, this will help make the menu at your wedding as sweet as you are for each other.
-Lily Fink Harrington
@acharmedwife
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