A choice menu for 140 guests
The couple chose a menu with two starters, three mains and two desserts. They send their guests a link to their wedding website, collect the choices, and email you a spreadsheet three weeks before. Half the choices are in one column separated by commas. Some guests are missing. Children are on the adult menu. The table plan arrives separately, a week later, as a photo of a seating chart.
Your coordinator retypes it, counts each dish, chases the missing guests, and builds a table-by-table list so the servers know who ordered the fish. Then the couple move six people between tables.
Couples are not caterers
Couples do their best, but they are collecting information for you with tools not built for it, while planning everything else.
- Wedding websites and RSVP tools export choices in formats that vary widely.
- Choices and the table plan are collected separately and changed separately.
- Late RSVPs and substitutions arrive by message, often to the venue coordinator rather than you.
- Children's and supplier meals get mixed in with adult choices.
- Service needs choices by seat, and nobody collects them that way.
The venue coordinator often sits in the middle, too. Guests who change their mind tell the couple, the couple tells the venue, and the venue emails you, sometimes days later. Each hop is another chance for a change to be lost or for two versions of the same guest to exist.
Then there are the guests who never answer. Every choice menu wedding has a handful who ignore the RSVP, and the couple either picks for them, forgets them or asks you what to do the week before. Without a list showing who is missing, that conversation happens late.
What it costs on the day
The office spends hours on every choice menu wedding. Mistakes show up at service: a server with the wrong list, a guest who swears they ordered the vegetarian main, a table that has one fish more than the kitchen plated. For the couple, it is a moment they notice.
It also limits what you offer. Some caterers steer couples away from choice menus because of the admin, which is a commercial decision made for the wrong reason.
A guest choice form built for your menu
- For each wedding, we generate a guest choice form from the couple's chosen menu, with your dish descriptions and a free-text box for dietary notes.
- The couple shares the link with guests, or enters choices themselves. They can see progress and who has not yet chosen.
- If they already collected choices elsewhere, we import their spreadsheet and flag anything that does not match a dish.
- The couple uploads or builds the table plan in the same place, dragging guests to tables.
- Your team sees live kitchen counts per course, and a table list showing each guest's choices by seat.
- At a cut-off date you set, the choices lock, and later changes go through your coordinator with a record.
- Place card or menu card data can be exported for the stationer, or printed by you.
| Output | Used by | Updates when |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen counts per course | Head chef | Any choice changes |
| Table service list by seat | Front of house | Choices or table plan change |
| Dietary notes by guest | Kitchen and supervisor | A note is added |
| Place card export | Couple or stationer | On request |
Dietary notes feed your usual dietary process, where your team checks them. The form collects the information; it does not decide what is suitable.
What the coordinator does instead
Instead of retyping, the coordinator checks progress and chases the couple about missing guests before the cut-off. Kitchen counts are always current. The service list matches the final table plan, so servers carry the right plates to the right people.
Couples appreciate a form that is clear and a view of who has not responded. It makes you look organised at the point they are deciding whether to recommend you.
On the day, the supervisor briefs servers table by table from the same list the kitchen used for its counts. If a guest says they ordered something different, the list shows what was submitted and when, which settles most questions quietly and quickly.
Is this your wedding season?
- Choice menu data arrives in many formats and is retyped.
- Table plans arrive separately and change late.
- Servers work from a handwritten or reformatted list.
- You discourage choice menus because of the admin.