By Virginia F. Swope. Warrenton, VA

Depending on your wedding style, your budget and how formal or casual you want your wedding; you have different options to serve your wedding reception food. Below you will find 5 different choices with their description

1. Buffets: A buffet style meal requires that guests serve themselves. Typically, each table is called up one-by-one to the buffet tables or buffet stations. Guests then spoon the food onto their plates, or have the food served to them by buffet attendants. Formal buffets make use of serving staff, whereas informal buffets do not. Buffets have a number of advantages.
They often cost less than plated service because serving staff are not always required, or at least fewer serving staff are needed. Secondly, buffets provide many different food options. Every guest is sure to find at least one or two mouth watering options in the buffet spread. Thirdly, Buffets often reduce food waste, as well. Guests can easily bypass the foods they don’t like rather than leaving them on their plates to be thrown away at the end of the meal.

2. Plated meals or Sit-down meals: If you prefer a sit-down meal to a buffet, you have a number of serving options to choose from. Keep in mind that all forms of sit-down meals require additional staff to bring the food from the kitchen and serve it to the guests. While this is not always more expensive than a buffet, it can cost more if the guest list is quite large. In general, every two tables of six guests require one server to serve guests’ food within a reasonable amount of time.
Plated meals do have many advantages. Guests usually get their meals faster because servers can bring plates to many tables at once. Buffets might seem like the cheaper option, but only if the same amount of food is consumed. Finally, the atmosphere provided by a sit-down dinner is simply more formal than that of a buffet. If you wish to pamper your guests, then plated meals are the way to go.

3. Family service: As the name implies, family service is just like a meal you might have at home with your family. The plates are already on the table. Servers bring platters of food from the kitchen

4. Plated service: basic plated service means that all the food is prearranged on the plates in the kitchen. This often produces a lovely effect because the chef can arrange the food and any garnishes to the best effect. This one is the most popular option.

5. Russian service (white glove): Russian service is one of the most formal plated meals. Servers wearing white gloves dish food out of heated platters and onto a plate already placed on the table. Guests can simply decline items they do not wish to eat.

Thank you for reading and good luck with your wedding planning!
Virginia Fernández-Swope
Website: www.VVweddingplanning.com
Email: hola@VVweddinplanning.com
Cell Phone: 703-347-3013