Foods to avoid serving at your wedding reception

Part of what is going to make your wedding reception memorable is offering delicious food and drink to your guests.

So you need to get it right. If you're using a good quality caterer, then that's unlikely to be an issue but if you're DIY-ing your wedding food then you really should be considering the points below.

10 Foods to Avoid Serving At Your Wedding

1. Don't serve anything too heavy. If you're planning dancing after dinner, then you don't want to issue a seven course banquet. (Apart from anything else it'll take a long time to eat and then you won't have much time left for dancing anyway.) So ditch heavy dishes like Beef Wellington (that's beef in a pastry crust), heavy puddings. Light and delicious is a better way to go.

2. We'd also say avoid shellfish. A lot of people are allergic to it, some won't eat it for religious reasons and it's one food where there's a higher risk of food poisoning. So best to keep that one off the menu.

3. Offal. That's liver, kidneys, tripe etc. It may be your favourite but to a lot of people it's yuck.

4. Anything fancy and flambéed. We're thinking dishes like crepes suzette (that's flamed pancakes), also drinks like flaming grappa (with a flaming coffee bean.) Just asking for trouble we think.

5. Raw food. Obviously we're not talking about salads here. More things like dishes made with raw eggs (certain mousses), very rare meat, steak tartare. Again you're running the risk of food poisoning and old people, pregnant ladies and children are advised not to eat raw eggs anyway.

6. Anything very adventurous. You may be a fan of Heston Blumenthal but we don't think your wedding reception is the place to replicate some of his more creative dishes. Snail porridge anyone?

7. Not serving enough food. Don't scrimp. If you're getting married early afternoon, you really can't wait until you all sit down to dinner at 7pm to feed your guests. Have an afternoon tea. And don't scrimp on the canapes and serve crisps instead either, it just looks mean.

8. Overly spicy or garlicky foods. A lot of people really don't like hot spicy curries and others don't like garlic either. Keep dishes tasty but not over the top.

9. A dish that is over elaborate and needs a lot of preparation. It's just going to fuss you and you'll be thinking about all the things that can go wrong. Into this category fall individually served souffles which might quite literally fall flat, anything that has to be served piping hot or anything that needs some heavy garnishing.

10. Dishes that are difficult to eat (I'm thinking of spaghetti here). Everybody is dressed up in their finery and they really don't want to splash their best clothes with sauce - so leave out noodles, spaghetti and anything that has to be eaten with chopsticks.



As always, it's a good idea to talk to your caterer about who's coming to your wedding. Always make sure you've caterered for vegetarians - and if people avoid certain foods for religious reasons they may be happy to eat vegetarian food instead.