The Biggest Pitfall To Avoid When Planning A Wedding Menu

Food is a major part of most wedding day celebrations, and the meals you choose to serve can play a pivotal role in setting the theme for your special day. (Fast food wedding catering, anyone?) But when deciding on the vibe of your event, it's also good to recognize which foods should not be served at all.

Professional wedding planners have worked with many chefs who understand how to properly preserve food to keep its quality. There is a whole list of raw foods that ideally should be banned from these events because of how they hold up. For example, most salad greens wilt moments after getting dressed, and a dressing like Ceasar that contains raw eggs can't be sitting at room temperature or in the heat for long before it begins to spoil. 

Offering a variety of food options can help meet multiple different dietary patterns but keeping food safety in mind is crucial. A main category of foods that should be avoided if you want to mitigate the threat of food poisoning includes raw or undercooked items, which come with increased risk.

While the wedding day is supposed to be all about the happy couple, taking advice from those who have seen the pros and cons of specific food choices can be beneficial. It's important to understand what your guests would enjoy eating, but you also want to ensure they don't get sick at your wedding.

A popular meal of sushi or sashimi has the ability to carry food born illnesses like listeria or tapeworms, so it would be best to keep these items off your wedding menu (via UPMC). While an item like steak tartare sounds fancy and may be delicious, the raw ground beef has the potential to cause serious illness since bacteria like salmonella and E. coli could be present, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (via EatRight). On top of that, this dish is frequently served with raw egg yolk, which poses another potential danger to your health. At a wedding when everyone is consuming the same thing, a batch of contaminated raw food could be disastrous for your party, so serving cooked foods is a much safer bet.

Similarly, charcuterie boards have become popular wedding appetizers, but components like cut fruit and raw cheese that's unpasteurized are other unnecessary risks. Luckily, these are easy pitfalls to avoid with your wedding menu by simply opting for fully-cooked foods.