Which Wedding Food Service Style is Right For You?

How do I know which menu and service style is the best fit for my wedding?

One of the most important aspects of your wedding day is the catering services you offer your guests and the style in which it is served. At Made by Meg Catering, we aim to create an experience you and your wedding guests will never forget with memorable and delicious food they will enjoy on your big day, and that all begins with deciding which wedding food service style is right for you, your significant other, and your overall event vision. Whether you’re interested in a formal sit-down plated dinner, a relaxed cocktail-style reception, or themed grazing stations, our team is here to help you find the perfect option to match your vision and needs.

The catering service staff with Made by Meg Catering wants your wedding to be perfect, which is why we ask the intake questions regarding your available wedding details, guest count, and timeline, and are always attentive to your specific wants and needs. Whether you have guests with strict allergies or dietary restrictions to the knowledge that the mother-of-the-bride will want extra dressing for her salad course, our goal is to ensure your wedding catering experience goes as smoothly as possible by taking care of all the little culinary details that make up your day, taking the stress off and allowing you to live in the moment. By having a team that cares deeply about ensuring your vision for your wedding day comes to life in the most spectacular ways with delicious wedding food, you can focus on enjoying yourself and creating lifelong memories on your big day. Whether you want a formal sit-down plated dinner or a more relaxed cocktail-style reception, we can design a custom wedding menu for what you envision for your perfect wedding celebration.

Wedding Reception Food Service Style Options

When selecting a catering style, you’ll want to look for an exceptional custom menu design, kind and professional staff, and plenty of service styles that will accommodate any kind of reception you could imagine hosting. With our full-service catering from Made by Meg, we offer several different formats for your wedding reception, including Plated Sit-Down Dinners, Passed Hors d’oeuvres and Cocktail Hour, Live Action Cooking Stations, Grazing Stations, Buffets, Family-Style, and Dessert Tables.

Here is a closer look at the various types of wedding food service style options:

Classic 3-Course Plated Sit-Down: The full-service multi-course meal is the most traditional and formal option since each wedding guest is served an individual plated meal to their designated seat. This option offers guests three seated courses: bread service, a salad or appetizer, and the main entrée, typically accompanied by dessert, and sometimes including a fourth course such as intermezzo or amuse bouche. Typically guests are given a choice of two main entrees, which they will select beforehand when responding to your wedding invitation RSVP card. Another option is to serve each guest with two proteins such as meat and fish on one plate, often called a “duet” plate. 

Guests with dietary restrictions are noted and individually accommodated based on their seat placement, and this information is provided by the hosts or planner to the caterer in advance along with your final guest count. There’s always a chance that you will have a guest-of-a-guest who might be gluten free, and it’s important to make sure that everyone is able to find something to eat. 

Seated Family-Style: If you’re looking for a seated meal with a more communal and casual feel, any of the Made by Meg main course selections and sides can be formatted for family-style service. This option is somewhat similar to a sit-down dinner, except less formal and, while guests may be assigned to a specific table, the seat/table assignments are less crucial. 

For the family-style reception, the servers bring large platters of food and serving utensils to tables to share, where they are then passed around by the guests, with each taking the quantity they’d like for their own dish. This way, your guests can fill their own plate with their desired portion size of what interests them most while giving you that close, intimate, family-dinner feel.

Buffet Style: A buffet is presented to guests with clearly labeled serving platters of food, including both mains and sides, set up on long tables in an area either nearby or adjacent to the dining tables. Guests are excused from their seats one-table-at-a-time to go down the buffet line and build their meal, selecting the items that they would like to enjoy that night. 

For the various food stations set up for the buffet, you can either have it where guests walk along and serve themselves, or another option is to have waiters or waitresses stationed behind each buffet table, scooping and serving each item onto the guest’s dish. Similar to family style, in that both options allow for guests to select their food items and corresponding portion sizes, a buffet is a great option for a more casual style of reception. All Made by Meg course selections can be presented as a buffet, offering you a more social mealtime option for every guest count. 

Cocktail-Style Hors D’oeuvres: A cocktail-style reception offers hors d’oeuvres and other various small bites for a specific duration of your evening, either before dinner at cocktail hour or served all-night at a cocktail-style reception instead of a sit-down dinner. The hors d’oeuvres sizes are typically a one-or-two-bite portion and can be various combinations of hot and cold menu items. These bites can be tray passed around via servers or set up at stations for guests to help themselves at their leisure. This is a great option for couples who want a more laid back and casual feel with more focus on mingling, dancing, and enjoying a few drinks.

Typically, 3 different types of appetizers are the minimum for cocktail hour, and you can’t get away with less without slight disappointment, with most couples opting for 5 of their favorites. The perfect bite size and packed with flavor, a few of our most popular hors d’oeuvres are Spicy Tuna on Crispy Rice, Chile Cumin Filet Mignon with Mango Salsa, Seared Ahi Tuna Poke Guacamole Tacos, Crispy Buffalo Cauliflower, Saag Paneer Pizzettas, Mac N’ Cheese Poppers, Bacon Bourbon BBQ Chicken Kebabs, Goat Cheese Tarts, and the LA Dog with Shishito Relish. 

Grazing Stations for Cocktail Receptions: As an alternative to tray-passed apps, a grazing station allows your guests to snack for either a designated amount of time or all night long, available to groups of 25 guests or greater. Choose from a variety of small bites or an already curated station, and Chef Meg’s team will make sure everything looks picture-perfect while capturing your attendees hearts and taste buds. Five of our most popular Grazing Stations for Cocktail Hour include our Crostini Station, Tuscan Station, Tapas Bar, Little Saigon Station, and 3 Hand Selected Cheese & Charcuterie.

Prepared Dinner Stations: A station-style reception offers food spread out among different stations near your dining areas throughout your event space. Dinner stations are completely customizable, and some couples choose a specific ethnic cuisine, while others may mix-and-match their favorite International dishes. Before your event, you’ll choose the dish style and theme, and our team will handle perfecting the presentation for your event. With a variety of combinations, your guests can select their desired ingredients to build their perfect meal. 

Your different stations displays are maintained by our staff throughout the designated service times for your event, giving you the opportunity to present a more creative and diverse menu. There are a variety of popular prepared stations to choose from for Lunch Receptions and Dinner Receptions, with five of our most popular including the Gourmet Taco Bar, Premium Sushi Station, California Coastal Poke Station, Savory Waffle Station, and Gourmet Slider Bar paired with a French Fry Station. For Brunch Receptions, popular stations are the chef attended Belgian Waffle Bar, Parisian Crepe Bar, and Farm Fresh Omelet Bar.

Live Action Cooking Stations: With the Live Action Cooking Stations, we love seeing guests filming the chefs flipping the skewers on the grill or tossing their selected pasta with their favorite sauce combo in a skillet, then panning off to the finished product. One of our most popular Live Action Cooking Stations is the Tuscan Pasta Station, where guests get to choose their own pasta (raviolo, penne, or cheese tortellini), sauce (brown butter sage, garlic alfredo, spicy marinara), and topping (chili flakes, shaved parm, fresh basil) combinations and watch their pasta be cooked right in front of their eyes. Efficiency is key, with the pastas noodles and tortellini constantly being prepared by our chefs so that they’re readily available for guests, and the sauces are held warm in large vats and then added directly to the personal skillet. Watching the Chef prepare globally inspired dishes adds an exciting element to your cuisine offerings at wedding reception, adding both buzz and deliciousness to your menu. “Guests love that they can watch the Chef make their food,”

The 7 Most Popular Wedding Menu Service Style Options: 

1. Classic 3-Course Plated Sit-Down
2. Seated Family-Style
3. Buffet
4. Cocktail-Style Hors D’oeuvres
5. Grazing Stations for Cocktail Receptions
6. Prepared Dinner Stations
7. Live Action Cooking Stations 

Don’t Forget About Dessert! No event is complete without a sweet treat. Whether you opt for a traditional cake-based dessert option or have a preference for other sweet treats, anything goes, so long as you don’t forget this part of your course flow! We’ve enjoyed seeing new and non-traditional requests for a couple’s favorite dessert, and recently we’ve catered a variety of sweet dessert stations focused on churros with a trio of dipping sauces, customizable ice cream cookie sandwich bars, beignets, dessert shooters, ice cream, milk topped with cookies, and s’mores stations. Recent trends show that couples are choosing delicious, creative options, and our team at Made by Meg Catering can provide the wedding dessert options that fit within your personal preferences, whether that’s something we make in-house or a referral to a local traditional cake baker.

Let Us Help You Make Your Wedding Day Perfect

Our clients aren’t just business relationships, we care deeply and truly become involved in every part of your big day to make sure that it’s everything you have ever dreamed of. From detailed wedding catering consultations and in-person tastings to cross referencing your notes to ensure your day-of menu exactly reflects your vision, to our meticulous quality checks before the food is served to your guests, we take all the tried & true steps to exceed your wedding-day food expectations. One of our top priorities as a premier Southern California wedding catering service is to ensure your wedding day is everything you have ever wanted with food that you and your guests will crave and remember fondly for many years down the road.

We are truly here to help you in any way and we go above and beyond to ensure that your day is stress free with food that surpasses your standards. We look forward to potentially sharing one of the most important days of your and your partner’s lives by offering our delicious wedding menus and service.

Ready to find the perfect catering for your Southern California wedding? Contact us today to set up a consultation to discuss how we can help bring your dream wedding menu to life. As your premier Los Angeles catering service for weddings, we look forward to helping make your wedding day absolutely perfect and delicious! For examples, be sure to check our press and media page for photos of events and weddings we have catered!