Wedding breakfast- choice of meal?

[tan28]

Hey everyone.
Currently in talks with our catering company.... who are suggesting we give people the option to pick from a few starters/ mains & pudding.
They charge an extra £5 for that.
However every wedding we have attended we just got given one option and we had no issues with that.
My plan is to pick a set menu & a vegan option for our vegetarian/ vegan friends.
AIBU towards our guests? Should we offer them the option to choose what they want to eat? Our caterer wants a reply by tonight and I'm questioning myself now
TIA x

Our hotel advised us just to do a set menu (with a veg option, obviously, and catering for any allergies), said people order choices months in advance, forget what they've ordered, change their mind and it all just ends up an extra headache you don't need.

Don’t do pre order, we did,, choice of meat, fish or vegetarian. Bloody nightmare getting responses, we asked for it with the rsvp.

Op if you can afford offer a choice, if not set menu or veggie.

Whatever you do, please don't make your vegetarian guests have the vegan option. There is a big difference between the two, and I ended up starving and very drunk at a wedding where veganism was forced upon me.

I’ve honestly never been to a wedding without at least two choices per course. All the weddings I’ve been to over my sixty years have been in Scotland, so perhaps it’s cultural differences.

Vegan food is a lot more restrictive in terms of ingredients - no milk, yoghurt, butter, eggs, honey etc - I wouldn’t appreciate it being forced on me tbh. It’s also much harder to do well than vegetarian food.

My wedding had a set menu with a veggie option for any vegetarians that we were notified of beforehand

Set menu was
Teriyaki glazed salmon (can't remember the full description)
Sorbet
Belly of pork (can't remember the full dish again)
Cannot remember the dessert...

God my memory is shocking!!

I never go to a wedding expecting anything palatable. Once a place is doling out food for over say 40 people they can’t bring it too you freshly cooked - it’s not physically possible - so it’s usually quite grim. I take a handbag full of chocolate and then if the food is not to my linking I’m fine.

Perhaps it should be vegan for everybody then? Just because there's no cheese or eggs or anything else from an animal, it shouldn't be a hardship

But it is.

I'm sorry if I offended any vegetarians! We will choose different meals for our vegetarian guests. The only reason we considered serving them a vegan dish is because the only guests we know are vegetarians .. are slowly going the vegan route, but there might be some unexpected vegetarian guests so yes we will choose a different meal to the vegans. I'm really Sorry if I offended anyone xx

Our hotel advised us just to do a set menu (with a veg option, obviously, and catering for any allergies), said people order choices months in advance, forget what they've ordered, change their mind and it all just ends up an extra headache you don't need.

and

Don’t do pre order, we did,, choice of meat, fish or vegetarian. Bloody nightmare getting responses, we asked for it with the rsvp.

If you have EVER tried to organise a group dinner (say a work Christmas party) you'd realise this is really sound advice.

I don't think it's offensive tan28, don't worry! I think people dislike it when everybody gets lumped together in the "dietary requirement" option.

For example, a friend of mine is coeliac and she hates it if she has to eat a nut-free vegan meal, when she could have had the meat option, just with a gluten free gravy — it seems a lazy decision from the caterer.

Easiest to just tell people the menu.

Ie it's chicken main or veggie option is pasta.

Then people who aren't keen on the meat could pick veggie if wanted. So there are 2 choices for most people (but not veggies)
If meat option was steak I couldn't eat it but chicken I could.

£120 pp. bloooooody hell

I'd give them a choice. X

Don't think I've ever had a choice at a wedding. Sounds nice but don't really care.especially if it adds a lot of cost. But I am not remotely fussy and don't have the emotional reaction some seem to have to food. I don't mean SN, sensory stuff here btw but eg my father who seems to struggle with any meal not being entirely arranged to suit his tastes. It's just one meal......it doesn't matter if you don't love it. Just make sure it's enough to soak up the booze!

Has everyone missed that the OP is asking about the wedding breakfast ?!

She’s not asking about the evening meal (which would be more common to have a choice) - a hotel breakfast is some kind of combo of fry up, fruit/yoghurt, cereal/toast.

Surely just chuck in some vegan sausages and dairy free yoghurt, and make sure you have some gluten free bread?

@Blackbird2020

The Wedding Breakfast IS the main meal.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_breakfast

@Blackbird2020

Has everyone missed that the OP is asking about the wedding breakfast ?!

She’s not asking about the evening meal (which would be more common to have a choice) - a hotel breakfast is some kind of combo of fry up, fruit/yoghurt, cereal/toast.

Surely just chuck in some vegan sausages and dairy free yoghurt, and make sure you have some gluten free bread?

@Blackbird2020 the wedding breakfast is the meal after the wedding. It doesn’t mean actual breakfast.

We gave our guests a choice because we love food and wanted people to have options. I’d say 50/50 of the weddings we’ve been to have been a choice vs set menu. I prefer a choice but don’t feel upset if there isn’t one (luckily I eat pretty much anything).

Oh right… my bad! Sorry! Thought it was a bit odd that everyone was talking about beef or salmon

I work in hospitality/weddings and would advise not to give choice, everyone having the same (with the exception of any dietary requirements) makes the service more efficient all round (guests forget what they ordered months ago). If you do give a choice, be prepared to be chasing up guests for their choices and to make place cards with the choices written on them which helps the waiting staff on the day get the food out efficiently.

@FruitMelange

Perhaps it should be vegan for everybody then? Just because there's no cheese or eggs or anything else from an animal, it shouldn't be a hardship

Well that's not at all what I was saying. I was saying that all vegan food lacks for a vegetarian is cheese and eggs. The majority usually eats meat. Is lacking cheese and eggs that bad? For one meal?

I don't care if my meal doesn't have cheese or eggs in it. I do care if substitutes have been used.

The trouble with vegan food is sometimes it is something a vegetarian would quit happily eat, but sometime it contains fake animal products that a vegetarian would rather not have.

Cheese is top of the list - I like cheese, I don't mind not having cheese, but vegan cheese is truly awful. So it really depends on the dish.

For £120 per person, I'd expect something pretty damn creative and tasty!

In Oz "alternate serve" is a thing, so it might be beef/chicken or chicken/fish, you get what is put in front of you then it is up to you to negotiate with your neighbours if you want to swap. There will usually be the option for any event to say if you need veggie, vegan, halal etc. I can totally understand it for a wedding where I am just very grateful for an invite and a nice meal but if you pay a lot of money for an event and you are presented with something you don't want to eat while eyeing your neighbour's lovely meal it's a bummer.

Nobody is there for the culinary experience. Just do what you can afford. If £5 a head is a big deal for you then don’t do it.