Planning a wedding is both a joyous, exciting task and an immense amount of work. If you partner with the right teams of people, you can make the planning portions of your wedding much easier to manage. Unless you’re a wedding planner yourself, relying on the expertise of those in the industry will serve you well.
One thing couples doing wedding planning often find challenging is understanding certain aspects of various tasks. One of the least understood, yet most important, tasks is a food tasting. Some couples will try to skip this step to save themselves time, money, or even a little bit of stress.
If you’ve been asking yourself about why you should have a food tasting, you should consider the following.
What Is a Food Tasting?
A food tasting is a preliminary “test” of the food menu you and your caterer are working on for your wedding. The caterer may prepare samples of their menu offerings with the intent of helping you narrow down your choices or create perfect pairings.
In other cases, when you’ve already started crafting the menu, the food tasting might be designed to allow you to test your menu items altogether for the very first time.
Why Wouldn’t You Do a Food Tasting?
As already mentioned, some couples try to skip the food tasting step. Maybe they looked at the caterer’s menu and decided exactly what they wanted. They’re also busy as they prepare for a wedding. Adding in a food tasting may not seem all that important. Finally, they may think they can save a little bit of money by eliminating the food tasting.
The tasting is incredibly important, however, and you shouldn’t skip it. Most caterers include it complimentary, and you won’t see much of a discount if you don’t have one. Having a tasting helps to ensure your big day goes off without a hitch, so you’re best to make the time.
What’s the Point?
Every caterer is different, and they’ll prepare dishes differently. You may see an item on their menu and think it will be amazing. When you get to the food tasting, you realize it’s not exactly what you expected or what you wanted.
The purpose of a food tasting is to give you a chance to test out the flavours. Maybe each individual dish is great on its own, but the flavours don’t work together. Maybe, after sampling a dish, you ask for some particular changes. Perhaps the spice ratio is off and could be adjusted. You might decide to swap out certain dishes with others to create a more cohesive menu.
The tasting is your chance to “test drive” your menu before the big day. There’s still time to make changes to the menu, so you can be sure what you’re presenting to your guests is a delectable wedding feast.
Shouldn’t You Trust Your Caterer?
You may have chosen your caterer based on their menu offerings or on their reputation. Maybe you were at another wedding they catered and you were so impressed with the food, you asked the couple for their card.
You should absolutely trust your caterer. Having a food tasting is still a good idea. As much as your caterer is no doubt talented at crafting a menu, they don’t have your sense of taste.
The food tasting is especially important if your caterer is crafting any custom dishes for your menu. You want to be sure they’ve created something that matches your vision, and something that meshes well with the rest of your menu.
A food tasting is clearly an important part of your wedding planning. Work with your caterer to create a wonderful menu to delight your wedding guests on your big day.
