Collecting dietary requirements

Have you already sent out invitations? If not, we put a space for dietary & access requirements on our RSVP cards because we’re also doing a set menu for everyone. It’s been great for capturing actual requirements, but the downside is that some people have interpreted ‘requirements’ as ‘preferences’ which has been a bit annoying because it’s making us second guess our menu choices!

If you’ve already sent invitations you might just need to message people and ask.

On a slightly separate note, we also have found asking about access requirements really useful because we now know who needs to have easier access to a disabled toilet, who will need to use a lift to get to the ceremony room (as it’s upstairs in our venue) and also someone who needs access to a quiet area to pray, so we’ve been able to let our venue know these things in advance so they can take care of it all on the day.

Hey Sarah - thanks a lot for the quick reply. Actually, I should have been more specific in my question, as we are using the online tool to send out electronic invitations. And it only allows for me to edit menu options, but not add a field for dietary restrictions.

Ah got it! I’m not using an online tool, but if you can input options for the menu, could you put ‘Dietary requirement - please contact us directly’ as a menu choice? No idea if that’ll work with your particular system though!

I would hope that if someone has an actual requirement, rather than a preference, they would contact you. If a person is unable to consume a particular foodstuff due to a food intolerance or religious reason, they should have the common sense to let you know - and if it's just an 'I don't like eating...' kind of 'requirement', then you probably don't want to encourage them to let you know about those!

Oh I just asked this question also. I think the website should provide this option when confirming attendance. I asked a question a while ago about renewing paid version of wedding site. I got crickets back from them.