I thought I’d take a moment to talk about how to creatively let your chef or servers know what meals guests have pre-selected for your dinner party or wedding reception. I’m using Sonia and Ed’s cutie pie moon & stars invitation suite as an example.
If you’re like a lot of couples, you may be considering offering multiple entree options for your guests. You know the drill…do they want steak, fish or vegetarian and so on. When this is the case, most caterers will need a very close estimate in advance which you’ll typically collect by adding a line to your RSVP card.
From there, the most common thing to do is put a “S” for Steak, “A” for Ahi or “V” for vegetarian somewhere in a corner or at the bottom of the dinner menus. I, personally, don’t care for that option as it gives guests too close of an awareness of the “how” the catering and service is implemented. Also, it it’s just not that interesting. Instead, we like to be inspired by the stationery and pull a detail from the design to communicate the meal choice.
In the instance of Sonia and Ed, we carried the moon and stars theme through and were able to get creative by using the phases of the moon and/or star design to tell the servers which meal the guest had pre-selected. For instance, we used the full moon to imply “Short Rib”, the half moon to imply “Ahi”, the stars alone for the vegetarians and a cow jumping over the moon for the kid’s meal (my personal favorite).
![](https://www.bethhelmstetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screen-Shot-2017-12-05-at-5.38.25-PM.png)
![](https://www.bethhelmstetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/FullSizeRender.jpg)
At the wedding, guests were none the wiser and each had a little moment of charm that was cohesive and relevant to the event design waiting for them when they sat down to dinner.
![](https://www.bethhelmstetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screen-Shot-2017-12-05-at-5.35.20-PM.png)
Don’t be afraid to get creative on even the tiniest of details. If you’re a classic bride and don’t have anything as “themed” as this suite, don’t worry. You can achieve the same affect by having one menu that is just clean and simple. One with a clean line between the courses and one menus with a sweet, but classic trio of dots between courses. All will feel timeless and achieve the same affect when it comes to communicating with the servers.