Photo Courtesy: The Merlin Phuket
When planning your wedding the reception can be a source of great confusion and worry. Who should you invite; where should they sit; will they like the food; will they like the music? It’s enough to give any bride a headache! One way to make sure feeding your guests is the easy part of the wedding planning process is to plan a buffet at your reception. This way your guests can eat food that they like in portions that suit them, and it’s often a much cheaper option than a formal sit-down three course meal, especially if you do it yourself. Here’s how to serve buffet food at your wedding reception and get it right:
Consider the number of guests
If you have a large number of guests this can lead to long lines at the buffet table and hungry, impatient guests. Consider having several buffet areas or a buffet table that can be accessed from both sides so that the line will move quicker. You could even ask the DJ to control things and announce when each table can go up and take their food; this may or may not work well depending on the number of guests!
Dress the tables
If you’re doing the buffet and dressing the room yourself it’s still easy to keep your buffet table in with your wedding theme. Cover each table with a plastic tablecloth in your wedding colours; this will keep your theme going and make cleaning up easier at the end of the day! Try not to over-decorate the buffet tables as the main focus should be the food. It’s important to ensure the essentials are on the tables though including plates, napkins, cutlery and condiments.
Think outside the box
Don’t just go for the boring old quiche, salad and chicken drumsticks on the buffet, if there’s a particular cuisine that you and your partner love then you could incorporate that. For example if he proposed on holiday in Spain you could have a Spanish Tapas themed buffet. You could even have different tables with different styles of food i.e. Mexican, Sushi, Greek etc so that your guests have plenty of choice and appreciate the effort you’ve gone to.
Cater for dietary requirements
If one of your guests has a gluten intolerance then make sure there are plenty of gluten-free alternatives available other than just salad! You’d be surprised how many everyday foods have gluten in so your guests will appreciate the effort if you provide them with a good choice of food. The same goes for any diabetic guests, vegetarians, and those with lactose intolerances. As long as you’ve made an effort to include them they’ll appreciate it.
Sort the seating out
When planning a buffet reception for a wedding it can be difficult to know what the etiquette is for seating arrangements. It’s less formal than a sit-down dinner so some may feel that it doesn’t require a seating plan. However, if you’ve got divorced parents to keep apart, or friends that could become cliquey if left to seat themselves then it may be a good idea to have a seating plan in place to encourage mingling and keep certain people away from one another!
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