Stationery and food – Printed menus and multiple meal options

If you want to be grand about your wedding you may think that a printed menu – preferably by Smythson – is the way to go. My feeling generally is that printed menus are a bit of a waste of time and money.

Aesthetically they add to clutter on what is already likely to be a fairly busy table. Think about the place names, napkins, cutlery, crockery, flowers, favours (more on this another time) table names holders, wine bottles, water jugs and all the other things you might have that might be more useful on the table and what you will end up with is a load of waste paper that looks scruffy pretty quickly after a red wine bottle and a vegetable dish have been dumped on top of it after it has been thrown into the centre of the table.

In practical terms they are also pretty obsolete. At most weddings with conventional menus there is a 'choice' of one dish. So no need for a menu. Oui?

Some couples do have a choice of dishes for their wedding, but nearly all caterers will make you give exact numbers for each option beforehand and it will probably work out as being more expensive to have multiple options. Chasing up flakey friends who have not responded to find out what exactly they would like for dinner is also stress you don't need when you could be having more fun enjoying your last weeks of freedom, experimenting with nail colours, getting smashed choosing your wine for the big day or selecting your vajazzle design for your wedding night... or whatever floats your boat. For these reasons I would avoid anything complicated beyond alternatives for vegetarians and those with food intolerances.

Multiple options also slow the service down as waiting staff, however professional they are, are not psychic and there is always going to be an element of hanging around waving plates asking 'Fish or chicken' in a rather Christmas-works-night-out style. It is possible that if you do go for this option you would not notice this though as only the very worst venues would not have primed staff to know what the bride and groom were having... but it does happen.

Some guests like to have a menu in order to know what they are eating. But in my experience the flowery descriptions on the menus at weddings bear very little resemblance to the dry chicken breast in creamy sauce that often ends up in front of you.

I often try to avoid reading the menu anyway as nothing depresses me more than knowing that for pudding there will be strawberry tart or shortbread with cream: read this as a sugary dry mass-produced pastry case or biscuit with a sad strawberry on top and a scoosh of UHT whipped cream. Too depressing and makes me wish I still smoked so I could go for a fag when pudding came along instead of sitting looking at it.

The 'anybody know what we are going to be eating' chat is a good icebreaker between guests anyway. This lifeline is taken away by the ability to have a look at a menu directly in front of their noses and they might have to find alternative gambits. In fact, if you really wanted to have a giggle and get guests talking you could always publish a menu that bears no resemblance whatsoever to what is on the plate so that people could speculate on whether the printers or the venue got it wrong. But if this is the case you have to ask yourself why you are inviting such conversational cripples to your wedding anyway. If the answer is that these are your friends, consider emigrating. And staying away so that you can disconnect yourself from these people and start a new life.