Fall Wedding Catering Trends

Wedding food doesn’t have to be the standard menu. Event planners, chefs, and food fanatical brides and grooms are choosing unique, palate-pleasing ways to satisfy their guests’ appetites. Since the weather has started to cool, your guests will be craving rich, intensely flavored meals.

Keep the following ideas in mind as you begin to create your wedding menu.

Stand-out Starters

One popular alternative to the standard salad as a first course is soups. Their warmth and heartiness make them a natural fit for fall. Consider squash bisque served in little pumpkins, or butternut squash soup ladled over crumbled blue cheese.

If you do decide on a salad appetizer, add a hearty, seasonal element to your greens with aged cheddar, roasted walnuts, pumpkin seeds, grapes, or figs. You may even choose to serve each guest mini-portions of both.

Memorable Main Events

For entrees, filet, roasted chicken, and salmon are always crowd favorites. For something more unique consider a less typical red meat offering, such as a rack of lamb, a cut of veal or cornish hens. An option that’s more homely but still hearty and surprising include potpies filled with chicken and fall vegetables like carrots, turnips, onions, and leeks.

The Sweets

Simple American-style desserts like apple tarts, pie a la mode, and gooey brownies smothered in coffee ice cream are always a great choice. If you crave a more elegant option, serve dessert trios, so each guest is presented with three miniature sweets on a single platter such as caramel-coated lady apples on cinnamon sticks, a fresh little doughnut suspended on a demitasse spoon over a shot glass of milk, and small-scale apple pie a la mode.

Finally, for the wedding cake the hottest flavor continues to be chocolate especially in the fall. If that doesn’t attract you, consider a traditional wedding cake, a carrot cake, or cheesecake big enough to serve a crowd.