Planning our wedding dinner: 4 courses + cake

My fiancee and I are in the midst of planning the dinner we will be serving our wedding guests in September. It's going to be a sit down meal, four or five courses (including dessert), followed by cake.

We need to plan two menus: one meat, and one vegetarian/fish. The last thing we want is generic wedding food and we are willing to take some risks in order to put out a more elegant, more interesting meal. The chef seems very capable so we have lots of flexibility.

So far, this is what's been proposed to us:

Meat menu: (1) duck foie gras w/ poached quince, port wine glaze, and grilled brioche toast points, (2) lobster bisque with lemongrass and coconut broth, (3) beef shortrib osso buco w/ saffron risotto, pan juices, and gremolata, and (4) trio of creme brulees.

The fish menu swaps out the shortrib for pan roasted rock fish w/ butternut hash and beet reduction. Oddly, they forgot to offer an alternative to the foie gras.

Our preliminary thoughts are that the creme brulees seem a little boring (even though we love that particular dessert), and we aren't 100% on the main meat dish. We want to do a slow-cooked, fatty meat. Thus, things like beef shortribs, pork shoulder, and veal shank(?) fit the bill. We just don't know which to pick.

The lobster bisque is also kind of boring. Plus, since we'll be in Maryland (where I'm from), something with crab would be nice. Creme of crab, maybe? Still boring, though. What can be done to make a crab or lobster soup more interesting?

We need some sort of first course for the vegetarian/fish menu. Crabcake? Scallops? Some sort of salad?

As for hors d'oeuvres, we are completely up in the air. All we know is that we'd like to do some sort of bite-size take on Peking duck.

Any thoughts, suggestions, experiences, critiques, etc., would be much appreciated! Thanks!

Come on guys, I know you're all dying to help plan dinner for a wedding you aren't attending .

Sure. In fact, we contemplated doing a Peking-style duck, but we nudged it out for the shortrib/pork shoulder idea. Doing both would probably be overkill.

Actually, no we haven't. We're okay with the main meat course being less interesting, so long as it tastes good. It's the smaller courses we're worried about.

Any preference between pork shoulder and beef shortrib?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say 'contrast'. My general concern with the meat menu is that it's too hearty for a September wedding. Foie gras, lobster bisque, shortrib, etc., seems better suited for autumn or winter in a way. How do you think we can make it less . . . contrasty?


The venue is a mansion that typically serves as an art institute/gallery called the Strathmore. People will be divided up into smaller rooms that are internconnected. The institute has its own resident chef.

For us, the food is the most important thing. If I have to eat another chicken breast, salmon filet, or dry piece of steak, I'll put a gun to my head and end it right there and then.

Part of the problem is that the proposed menu sounds perfectly nice! We are better eaters of food than planners of meals, though. So it's hard to know if everything is as it should be. BTW, what kind of cuisine did you have?


Thanks for the thoughts. I would have thought that a braised shortrib would sit better than a quickly grilled steak. We figured that since it's slow-cooked, cooked through, and fatty, the meat would stay moist in the worst case scenario. What do you think would work better?

Regarding pleasing our guests: a significant number of them would prefer a Chinese banquet with platters of lobster, duck, and steamed fish. But we really wanted a slower, more elegant evening. Is it rude of us to serve food knowing that many might have preferred something else? I feel like it's impossible to please everyone, so all we can do is make sure we serve food that is as objectively good as possible.

This is not an option for us. Fortunately, our family friends don't need to eat Chinese food, and they won't be offended if we don't serve it. My sister didn't serve anything Chinese at her wedding and the vast majority of our family friends' weddings were European or American in cuisine, not Chinese.