How many options at food tasting?

Yeah that's pretty normal and SO annoying!
We had like 20 options to choose from and could only try 3...and that's because we had to put a request in for an extra as we get 3 entrees on our buffet.

This is pretty normal. The point of the tasting is to get an idea of your caterer's style and quality, not to test every item on the menu. Our caterer does one monthly tasting that's done as a group. They serve a buffet with their most popular menu items. I believe the one we went to had 3 entrees and probably 5 or 6 sides.

Our venue gave us a limited number of dishes that we could try as well, but they did say we could try more if we paid for them. I think it's pretty normal. We had narrowed down our choices by then but still paid for some extra plates just to be sure.

At our tasting, we were able to try 5 entrees.
I would have been disappointed if we were only allowed to try 2 as well. I guess you will really have to narrow it down and try your top 2 picks.
Our guests will have 4 options: beef, chicken, fish, or vegetarian. We'll be discussing our menu with our venue planners next month.

Ours let us try 5 entrees and 5 sides and we got to pick 2 entrees and 3 sides.

View Quoted Comment Yeah right? Like how do we choose which ones we want if we haven’t tried them? What if we don’t like 1 of the 2? Then we have to choose something that we’ve never tried as the second option to serve? 😒

See if your venue has an option where you can taste more than 2 for a small extra fee. I know that our venue does that. I think it would be worth a few extra bucks to know what more things taste like.

View Quoted Comment I'm totally in agreement with you!
I understand the financial aspect of it from the caterer's POV; it'll obviously cost money to make more food. However, it doesn't have to be full size portions.
For our tasting, the entrees were smaller portions, but we were still able to get an idea of what we did and did not like.

View Quoted Comment Did you all have to pay for your tastings to begin with too? Ours is charging us $40 per person plus tax and a service charge, so for 3 of us (myself FH and my mom) it is already over $150 and it’s 2 entrees and 6 hors douerves (and we have to choose 8 hors douerves for the wedding so not sure why we only get to taste 6 of them...?)

Well, in our case we are getting married at a restaurant. We chose a menu with 4 appetizers and 4 main courses. At our tasting, we were able to try them all in full sizes, which was great. And we got to grade them by taste, color, smell and texture.

For my venue, we go on a night of a wedding so we can see the room all set up and then we stay in the booking office and they will bring up a sampling of the cocktail hour and then the dinner and dessert. This is also nice because they said that we will be able to peak in and see how the whole venue is while there’s a wedding happening