Wedding Venue Challenges...

I don't think your over reacting but I can see the venues point of view. The idea is you choose your meals based on what you like and you sample them to ensure they meet the standards you expect not taste to see what you like from their selection. It seems misleading when you hear food tasting as its more sampling what you will have on the day and every vene we looked at did it in the same way. We chose our menu blind as we we'd abroad but we stuck to what we liked and it paid off on the day. You will never please everyone with food on the da so select what you two want and a veggie option if you have vegetarians attending. Also with regards to Saturday you will find this a lot. They reserve the date for weddings and you may have seen an empty calender but I guarentee a lot of people have booked last minute to reduce the hire charge. Even my wedding dress fittings didn't take place on a Saturday as they were reserved for brides finding their dresses. Can you not just book a weekday off as holiday or do a shift swap or ask to leave early one day and go at 3/4?

I don't think that your venue are being restrictive, I think they seem quite good!

Our caterers have a restaurant so we are going to their restaurant for our menu tasting. We have three options for each course on the actual wedding day but we only get to try one each at our tasting. They also won't make our desserts as they stated that they would need to make up a batch of two different things just for us to taste, which I am fine with. I have eaten at the restaurant before and the food has been lovely so I'm not worried. We don't get to taste our canapés and we don't get to taste our wine as that is being supplied by the venue, not the caterers.

Our caterers only do tastings on a Tuesday evening, so we have ours in October.

As Lapland said, it's not a chance to taste everything and see what you like, you are tasting the things that you have picked because you like them.

You need to appreciate that they are a business and they have hours that they need to follow and I wouldn't expect any wedding venue to do anything on a Saturday as it is a prime day for weddings. They have probably had more bookings since. X

You are having far more choice than we did and are paying about the same.... We picked the 3 canapés, starter, main and desert we were thinking of and then tried them. No second choices. Thankfully we loved them.

out venue doesn't normally do tastings due to the costs involved but we were quite pushy due to the large amount we are paying and the fact we are having the top packages on things

I think what your venue are offering seems normal. Our venue offered us food tasting of 2 of each course same as yours. We knew no matter what, we wanted a fish main so didn't bother trying it and then sampled the chicken and pork to decide between them. We didn't get to sample the wine although they had one of my favourites in their list so was happy. Our food tasting also had to be done during certain times during the week. It wasn't ideal but we had to take a day off for something else so did the food tasting then.

You could always do the food tasting and if your not happy and don't want to pick what you sampled then you could always explain that to the venue and that this leaves you unsure about what to choose. You might love the food you sample and not need to sample anything else. Could you do a late afternoon so that you don't need a whole day off work. I have found it hard meeting suppliers when they are not available on weekends so know how frustrating it can be but on the other hand I guess Saturdays are everyone's busiest days for weddings.