Food can truly make or break a wedding. After an emotional ceremony and posing for pictures, all your guests want to do is fuel up on some good food before partying the night away.

There are many ways you can serve up your food on your wedding day, and it’s important to pick the right style for you. Whether its a buffet, a plated meal or family-style, each serving style comes with its own pros and cons. Let’s dive into the family-style wedding menu.

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A family-style wedding menu has all the foods placed in the centre of each reception table. Generally, there are two or three entrees and a variety of sides. Guests then take it in turn to dish up for themselves from the platters. This serving style combines the best of buffet and plated meals.

Pros:

Everyone gets their food together:

With buffet meals, guests have to line up in their table groupings to get their food. With a family-style meal, the food is placed on every table so the need to line up and wait is eliminated. You also don’t require waitstaff to be constantly up and down balancing multiple plates to serve food in a timely matter, thus also reducing the risk of accidents.

Wider variety of options:

With a plated service, guests would have to pre-select their entree. With a family-style meal, however, all options are available and your guests can pick whatever they want. This saves having to keep track of who wants what and eliminates the risk of someone receiving the wrong meal.

It’s a conversation starter:

Seating guests that don’t know each other around a table can lead to awkward moments. With a family-style meal, there is something to talk about, even if it is just, “Could you please pass the potatoes?”. Beyond this, a family-style meal creates a more casual atmosphere than a formal plated meal, enabling your guests to feel more relaxed and open to chatting.

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Cons:

It can be costly:

Your guests might take more than one entree or dish up even more than they would have at a buffet where servers control portion sizes. As such, you might have to over-cater to must make sure there is enough food on each table. You will also need more serving platters and utensils to serve up the food on each table.

Takes up space:

Having all the dishes on the table can take up a considerable amount of space, and can leave it looking cluttered. You might also have to compromise on decor items like a large centrepiece to have enough room for the food, which can take away from your wedding look.

Feature image: Unsplash