Wedding Menu 2021: Ideas and Trends

The wed­ding menu becomes more and more sophis­ti­cat­ed every year: the new­ly­weds want not only to gen­er­ous­ly feed the guests, but also to sur­prise them with culi­nary mas­ter­pieces, unusu­al dish­es and orig­i­nal ideas. Chan­fash­ion has pre­pared a list of the most inter­est­ing wed­ding menu trends and ideas for 2021 for your wed­ding.

Individual snacks

Most often, at ban­quets, a vari­ety of snacks are served on shared plates. But 2021 trends sug­gest adding more mobil­i­ty to guests by serv­ing wed­ding snacks in indi­vid­ual box­es or glass­es. First­ly, it will reduce the crowd around the most pop­u­lar dish­es, as it is much faster to grab a box than to put on your por­tion with tongs. It will also reduce the amount of left­overs — guests will not impose unnec­es­sary treats that may remain uneat­en if sud­den­ly a dish from the wed­ding menu is not to your lik­ing. Sec­ond­ly, it looks much neater and clean­er. In addi­tion, card­board box­es for snacks can be dec­o­rat­ed in the col­ors of your wed­ding or add fun prints. And third­ly, do not for­get about the impact of coro­n­avirus on wed­dings: indi­vid­ual por­tions are much safer 🙂

Vegetarian motives

In sup­port of the trend towards sus­tain­abil­i­ty and aware­ness, veg­e­tar­i­an and veg­an dish­es in the wed­ding menu are gain­ing more and more pop­u­lar­i­ty. You don’t have to be against meat to enjoy this kind of cui­sine: even die-hard meat eaters might be inter­est­ed in try­ing veg­etable alter­na­tives to tra­di­tion­al dish­es or beyond meat 🙂 In addi­tion, veg­e­tar­i­an dish­es look very col­or­ful and bright, so they will def­i­nite­ly diver­si­fy the palette of your table.

You can vary the clas­sic wed­ding menu with veg­e­tar­i­an dish­es as an exper­i­ment, even if nei­ther you nor your guests fol­low such a diet in every­day life. This deci­sion will make the wed­ding menu lighter, fresh­er and more var­ied. How about mini burg­ers with sei­tan, paneer or tofu instead of beef pat­ty? Or some­thing more ele­gant, like baked ricot­ta with gin­ger sal­sa and peach chips? Such appe­tiz­ers are sure to warm up the curios­i­ty of the guests. To give such dish­es sati­ety, chick­peas, lentils, avo­ca­dos will come in handy.

An inter­est­ing idea would be to orga­nize a hum­mus bar at the wed­ding with var­i­ous addi­tives (for exam­ple, beet­root for a pink col­or), pitas and car­rot and cel­ery straws. And because of the pineap­ple in chili, grilled as a side dish to the main course, guests will be com­plete­ly ecsta­t­ic 🙂

Variety of desserts

When com­pil­ing a sweet menu for a wed­ding, you can’t decide: choco­late or berries? Clas­sic stuff­ing or some­thing trendy and unusu­al? Why stop at one option when plan­ning a wed­ding menu 🙂

Now a sep­a­rate sweet zone with a vari­ety of desserts for one bite is in fash­ion. Thanks to this option, you can please your guests with both clas­sic tastes and new orig­i­nal solu­tions. And this will great­ly sim­pli­fy your choice, because you do not need to dwell on one par­tic­u­lar option and wor­ry that guests will not like it.

But the wed­ding cake is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Recent­ly, con­fec­tion­ers have been exper­i­ment­ing not only with unique designs, but also with unusu­al fill­ings and fla­vor com­bi­na­tions: laven­der, matcha, mint, blue cheese with pear, car­rot cakes with cin­na­mon and oth­er unusu­al options.

We still advise choos­ing not too inno­v­a­tive fla­vors for the wed­ding menu, because it is of great impor­tance and it will be a shame if the guests sim­ply do not eat it. As a com­pro­mise — make the top small tier with an unusu­al taste, and for large ones, choose the clas­sics that every­one loves. Or leave the exper­i­men­tal com­bi­na­tions for small desserts, which we talked about above 🙂 This way, guests can try some­thing new, but will not be left with­out a dessert if they don’t like the unusu­al taste.

cocktail station

The area where guests can pre­pare their own drinks will be an inter­est­ing enter­tain­ment and will allow them to show their tal­ents. If mix­ing cock­tails is quite dif­fi­cult, as it requires cer­tain skills and dex­ter­i­ty, then dec­o­rat­ing them is much more pleas­ant and inter­est­ing. This trick is also suit­able for non-alco­holic drinks: for exam­ple, at a win­ter wed­ding, an area with cocoa and hot choco­late will fit per­fect­ly. In addi­tion to the tanks with the drinks them­selves, arrange marsh­mal­lows, cin­na­mon, cloves and oth­er spices, grat­ed choco­late and var­i­ous syrups on the table.

This idea will come in handy espe­cial­ly if before that you plan to arrange a bar­tend­ing show or a mas­ter class on mix­ing drinks. Sure­ly after such a spec­ta­cle there will be more peo­ple who want to try their hand 🙂

Night snack

We bet that you and your fiancé and the guests man­aged to miss the par­ties dur­ing the quar­an­tine 🙂 There­fore, con­sid­er the option that you will not want to leave after a cou­ple of hours of the wed­ding ban­quet.

If you are ready for a show must go on with danc­ing and fun until the morn­ing, then you need to think about an addi­tion­al sec­tion of the wed­ding menu. It will take ener­gy to stand on the dance floor all night, but dish­es like in a clas­sic din­ner will not work. Bet on hearty snacks, per­haps not even very healthy ones. We are sure that even after an ele­gant offi­cial wed­ding, no one will mind eat­ing a burg­er, french fries or bread­ed chick­en legs at a dis­in­te­grat­ed par­ty — such a con­trast has its own charm 🙂 Let the food on the menu be con­ve­nient enough to do with­out serv­ing and cut­lery.

Do not for­get to esti­mate the num­ber of guests: for sure, not every­one will stay until late. How­ev­er, do not dis­count the old­er gen­er­a­tion — some­times they are ready to par­ty until you drop even more than your peers 🙂 The eas­i­est way is to check with the guests in advance which of them is ready for such a dance marathon, but do not expect that the num­ber will be final . Some­one may have unfore­seen busi­ness, and some­one, on the con­trary, will get a taste already at the hol­i­day itself.

Not only meat

Heavy meat appe­tiz­ers, cuts, hot dish­es — in our coun­try they like to make a hearty wed­ding feast, so that no one leaves hun­gry 🙂 How­ev­er, this is fraught with heav­i­ness and pas­siv­i­ty. Well, who wants to jump at com­pe­ti­tions from the host after such a tight wed­ding din­ner?

In the warm sea­son, lighter and fresh­er dish­es will be very pop­u­lar. In addi­tion to meat, it is worth using fish and seafood, cere­als, fresh veg­eta­bles, berries and fruits — this will not only “light­en up” the wed­ding menu, but will also be good for the health and gen­er­al well-being of guests after the feast. Leave the meat on the menu for one of the hot options and one type of appe­tiz­er.

When com­pil­ing a light wed­ding menu, pay atten­tion to sal­ads with light nat­ur­al dress­ings (may­on­naise not only makes food heav­ier, but can also dete­ri­o­rate in the heat). Ingre­di­ents that were pre­vi­ous­ly unpop­u­lar in our cui­sine are also increas­ing­ly used in cook­ing: for exam­ple, cel­ery, parsnips, fen­nel and mush­rooms. Dis­cuss with your ban­quet man­ag­er or cater­er how you can play with these prod­ucts in an inter­est­ing way to diver­si­fy the wed­ding table.

Focus on soft drinks

When cal­cu­lat­ing the amount of alco­hol for a wed­ding, one should not for­get about non-alco­holic drinks! This item is espe­cial­ly impor­tant if you are plan­ning a wed­ding in the hot sum­mer or there are a lot of peo­ple on your guest list who are not too fond of wine and spir­its.

So that the wed­ding menu of drinks is not lim­it­ed to min­er­al water, juices and fruit drinks, you can think of more orig­i­nal ideas. For exam­ple, mock­tails are becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar — these are non-alco­holic twists on clas­sic cock­tails or orig­i­nal recipes. The main fea­ture is that they look just like drinks in an expen­sive bar, but at the same time they are harm­less to health, do not con­tain under a thou­sand calo­ries and will help to refresh with­out a hang­over the next morn­ing.

In trend at wed­dings and milk­shakes. You can offer guests a vari­ety of fruit and berry milk­shakes that guests can dec­o­rate to their lik­ing 🙂

And where with­out sum­mer clas­sics? Guests will like lemon­ade, espe­cial­ly if you choose unusu­al ingre­di­ents and com­bi­na­tions for the wed­ding menu: water­mel­on with basil, rasp­ber­ries with grape­fruit, cucum­bers, cran­ber­ries with rose­mary — the field for exper­i­ments is end­less!