So how exactly do you know who's eating what?

I'm putting

"Please initial next to each meal choice" or something like that.

I've seen some where it says

_____Beef

______Chicken

Please initial the entree choice for each guest

Oh! I had this issue and realized it AFTER I printed my RSVP's. I had:

M_______

___Beef

___chicken

and didn't realize how we were supposed to tell who got what!

Make sure you add to your RSVP card "Please initial beside meal choice". I ended up printing small slips of paper and adding them into the invitation to tell people to do this! Good thing you caught it before you printed them!!!

You can ask people to initial their choices. You may have to make some phone calls to clarify in the even that they just put check marks anyway

For mine, if they say one chicken/one beef, I'm just going to guess and assign it myself. They can trade if the waiter gets it to the wrong person. For most weddings I've been to, I can't remember what I chose by the time dinner rolls around, so I don't think people are going to be too picky.

Anyone else have a better strategy?

I'm asking my guests to initial by their meal choice as well.

I had the same issue and it is not yet resolved :-/

You guys are much more organized than me, ha! Good ideas.

I did on my invites

M_______________

___Chicken and crab cake ____Chicken and salmon ____ Vegetarian

Please indicate the number of each..

As far as knowing who has what, my event planner made little tags and taped it under their name cards so the servers know which meal to give them.. It went really well and everyone got exactly what they asked for..

I've always wondered about this! Luckily we are having a buffet dinner, so don't have to include food options.

BUT I did order my RSVPs so that some had one line, on up to four lines. I am writing people's names myself, with a yes/no to attending for each person. That way I know whose name to write on place cards, if only part of the family can come. And it keeps people from inviting guests, because there is no room to RSVP for them, ha!

I ordered from VP, and designed them myself, so I just ordered a few extra of each type, to make sure we had enough.

Initials seems to be the best option. Hopefully I'll remember this once I get to designing my invites!

I did this for my wedding. I put the "Please initial" next to the meal choice. Yeah, about half my guests didn't follow the directions. So be prepared for that. I figured since everyone responding on the same RSVP card would be sitting together, I just assigned them something and figured they could exchange plates at dinner, lol. Doing the choice for dinner turned out to be so much more of a hassle than I thought, as you have to give the venue/caterer the number of meals per table, and then we also did stickers on the place cards indicating the meal choice.

On mine I did this:

___ Seats have been reserved in your honor

___ Can't Wait!

___ Will be celebrating from afar

Beef Description

Name________

Chicken Description

Name_________

Please Initial Meal Choice was my wording...

Great post. I never understood how this would work.

Almost all the venues around here take orders at the table. It saves a lot of confusion because....

1. who wants to pick a meal three weeks ahead of time?

2. too many times the person in the couple who responds doesn't bother to ask what the other person wants to eat, but just makes the choice

3.if something else looks better than what guest A chose, they will say it's a mistake and they want B

4.If they take orders when guests sit, by the time they get through toasts, first dance and first course, it's 1.5 hours later, and there is plenty of time to tweek the orders.

Doing it in the invites is a gigantic hassle. That's why I love duet entrees, lol!

We are only inviting our families, no plus ones. So since we already knew everyone's names we put them on our RSVP cards so that there is no funny business and people dont try to invite someone else. This is what we did:

then our place cards will have either a small color on the corner depending on their choice of meal or a picture of what they will be eating. When it is time for dinner to be served the guests will be asked to place the card in front of them so that the waiters know who is eating what and don't need to ask. Also it avoids people forgetting what they chose they wanted to eat and switching.

Bad picture.Sorry. here it is again. We did one for 1 guest, 2, and 3

As much as I'd love to do duet entrees, it's really expensive and what's the point of having 3oz of a beef and a fish or whatever and then having people that don't like one or the other and not eating it at all! It's rare to see places offer food at the table around here...I think the 4 Seasons might but that might also explain why it's $140 a head just for the food! Once I had the decisions, I was going to put a sticker of some sort on the place card - showing the animal they wanted

Hey, it can't hurt to ask! We HATED it when people asked for rsvp'd menu choices.