Collect meal choices with the RSVP rather than separately: one menu with a course for each part of the meal, one dish per course for every guest, and a second menu only for people who need different courses, such as children. Set the RSVP deadline about six weeks before the wedding, send the caterer per-course totals when final numbers are due, and never ask guests to type out medical or religious details: a flag to follow up is enough. The rest of this post is how to set that up so the kitchen gets what it needs.
Why the meal choice belongs in the RSVP
A guest replying is already thinking about the day, and has the people in their party in front of them. Ask for the meal then and you get every answer in one go. Ask separately and you’re chasing the same people twice, usually in the fortnight when you have the least time. It also keeps the choice tied to the right person: a reply for a couple with two children should come back as four meals with four names, not “2 chicken, 1 fish, 1 kids” on a scrap of card.
Set it up as courses, not menus
RSVP tools that take meal choices, ours included, tend to organise food in three levels: a menu holds courses, and each course holds the dishes a guest chooses between. A guest picks one menu, then one dish from each of its courses.
The easy mistake is to make a menu for each course: one called Starters, one called Mains and one called Desserts. Guests are then asked to pick one menu, so each person chooses a starter or a main or a dessert, and the kitchen gets one course per guest. We saw it often enough to rebuild our own editor around courses. The right shape for a three-course wedding breakfast is one menu with three courses:
Main: Roast sirloin of beef, Pan-fried sea bass, or Wild mushroom risotto
Dessert: Sticky toffee pudding, or Lemon tart
If your caterer serves a set dessert, leave it off. Only ask about what guests actually get to choose.
When you need a second menu
A second menu is for a group of guests who get a different set of courses, not for a different choice within a course. The common ones:
- Children. A children’s menu with its own main and pudding, so a parent picks for each child without wading through the adult menu.
- A set plant-based menu. If your caterer runs a separate vegan menu rather than a vegan option on each course, make it its own menu.
A vegetarian main is just another dish under Main. Evening guests aren’t eating the wedding breakfast, so don’t ask them to choose anything at all.
How many choices per course
Ask your caterer before you write anything: it’s their kitchen, and the number of dishes they’ll run on the day is usually in the package. Name each dish the way it will appear on the menu card, so guests recognise it on the day and the kitchen can match a reply to a plate without guessing.
Dietary needs, without collecting medical details
Allergies, intolerances and religious requirements are exactly what a caterer needs to know, and exactly what you shouldn’t collect in a free-text box on a website. Health and religious information is special category data under UK data protection law, which asks for far more care than a dinner menu should need.
The practical answer is a flag. On Ode, each course offers Dietary needs next to the dishes; a guest taps it and nothing more, and you see who to speak to. A quick message or call gets the detail to the caterer directly, and the specifics never sit in anyone’s database. There is also No thanks for a guest who will skip a course.
Wording that gets clean answers
Short, specific instructions on the RSVP save a lot of follow-up messages:
Children’s menu: for guests aged 12 and under.
Allergies or dietary requirements? Tap “Dietary needs” on the course and we’ll be in touch.
For the rest of the RSVP, our twelve RSVP wording examples cover the formal and the casual versions.
Deadlines, and what the caterer needs
Set the RSVP deadline about six weeks before the wedding. That leaves time to chase late replies before final numbers are due, which is usually around two weeks before the day (your contract has the real date). When you send final numbers, the caterer typically wants three things:
- Totals per course: how many of each starter, main and dessert, and how many children’s meals.
- Dietary requirements, with names, after you’ve followed up the flags.
- Who is having what, by table, if they serve plated choices rather than asking at the table. This is where the seating plan and the meal choices meet.
The RSVP deadline guide has polite chase messages for the stragglers.
Doing it in Ode
Setting up
Add the RSVP section to your wedding website (the wedding template already has one) and open Meal choices. Add your courses first, then the dishes under each one. Add a second menu only if you need one; with a single menu, guests never see a menu name, just the courses. You can set up to five menus, ten courses and thirty dishes a course, and the same editor sits in the RSVP section and in Guests, so it doesn’t matter which you open.
Before the invitations go out
Settle the dish names first. A reply stores the dish a guest chose, so once replies arrive Ode lets you add or remove a dish but not rename one; a renamed dish would no longer match the answers already given. Every delete asks first and says what else goes with it.
When the replies come in
Each attendee gets a meal card and picks one dish per course. Every reply shows you who chose what, on every plan. On Plus and above you also get per-course totals that update as replies arrive, a printable catering sheet with the dietary follow-ups, and a seating plan that knows everyone’s meal. The wedding RSVP page has the full detail, and how online RSVPs work walks through it from the guest’s side.