Food, Glorious Food!

Updated: Sep 20

Top tips and choices for your wedding menus

When I got married, many moons ago, the food was definitely a big consideration. My husband and I love our food and wanted to get it right! Since that day, which seems like an awful long time ago, I’ve spoken to and designed many menus, and know what works best for couples.

If you haven’t mentioned food in your invitations, telling your guests what you will have at your wedding breakfast is a good idea. This can be done in several ways, each having its pros and cons. Let’s go through them together.

1. Table Menus

Table menus are often a 5x7 or A5 sheet that shows the full menu, including starter, main, and dessert. It can also detail special menus, such as vegetarian and vegan options.

Photography: (c): Richard Skins Photography

Table menus are cheap to print (you only need a couple per table), and if you have a simple menu, it’s visually tidy. However, if you have many guests at your wedding with specific allergies, intolerances, or strong taste preferences you need to cater for; or children who will have a different menu, having this all on one sheet may result in something that is overly busy and complicated.

2. Individual Menus

Individual menus are just that, a menu per individual guest. Visually they look pretty with a uniform look through the table styling. They are most often DL (99x 210mm), but can be made in lots of other sizes. You can also get creative using ribbon, an array of paper clips and other pretty ways of embellishing them.

They are perfect if your guest list includes an array of dietary requirements, allergies, intolerances; strong taste preferences or children’s menus.

Photography: (c): When Charlie Met Hannah

3. Fabric Menus

So often this is overlooked but printing onto fabric is such a versatile or wonderful way of creating a tactile design, and can sometimes work out cheaper than a card version. Fabric menus can be made in large format, table size, or as individual menus.

Photography: (c): Tom and Lizzie Redman

Photography: (c): Charlotte Razzell Photography

4. Large Formal Menus

Large format menus are wonderful if you are having a sharing or simple menu and don’t have many dietary requirements to cater for.

These are often displayed where your guests have their post-ceremony drinks and canapés and allow people to browse the menu before being seated.

5. Evening menus

Often couples will have a sharing menu in the evening, with a table full of delicious food for their day guests and evening guests to nibble on. It’s a great touch to add a menu here and this can be either a table menu, like mentioned above, or smaller cards displaying what each dish is, individually. The latter allows your guests to quickly and easily see specifically dishes that have allergy warnings.