Wedding RSVP meal choice wording, and the allergy question to ask

Word the meal choice on your wedding RSVP as one plain question for each guest: name every dish, add a few words of description, and mark the vegetarian and vegan dishes. Ask for a choice for each course only if your caterer needs it in advance, and always add one open question about allergies and dietary needs.

Everything else about food can wait for the day. Guests answer a reply on a phone, often in a queue, and every extra question is one more chance of a half-finished reply.

Does your caterer need meal choices in advance?

It depends on the caterer, so ask before you write a word of the form. Some caterers cook a set menu with a vegetarian option and need only the numbers. Others need each guest’s choice by name, so the right plate reaches the right seat. Five questions for your caterer:

• Do you need each guest’s choice for each course, or only the totals?
• By what date do you need the final choices and the dietary notes?
• Do you want them by guest name, by table, or both?
• Is there a children’s menu, and up to what age?
• Who on your team should receive the allergy notes, and in what format?

The second answer decides your reply date. Bridebook’s planning timeline (2026) notes that some caterers need up to four weeks’ notice of final numbers, so set your reply date early enough to chase late households before the caterer’s deadline. Our guide to when to send wedding invitations in the UK shows how to work back from that date.

How do you word the meal choice question?

Ask one plain question for each person in the household, and give every dish a plain name. Add a question for each course only if your caterer serves a choice at every course. Put (v) or (vg) in the name itself, so nobody hunts for a key at the bottom of the card. A form you can copy:

• Will you be able to come? Yes, with pleasure / Sadly, no
• Who in your household is coming? (tick each name)
• Starter, for each guest: Heritage beetroot with goat’s cheese (v) / Chalk stream trout with cucumber
• Main course, for each guest: Roast chicken with spring vegetables / Wild mushroom risotto (v)
• Pudding, for each guest: Lemon tart / Dark chocolate mousse
• Does anyone in your household have an allergy or a dietary need? Please tell us in your own words, with each guest’s name.

If your caterer serves one menu to everyone, keep only the first two questions and the last one. Everything else the invitation needs is in our checklist of what to include on a wedding invitation.

How do you ask for dietary requirements on a wedding RSVP?

Use one open text box and let guests answer in their own words. A guest with a serious allergy knows how to describe it, and tick boxes lose the detail the kitchen needs: “no nuts, including traces” is a different instruction from “no nuts in the dish”.

Expect a few. The Food Standards Agency’s 2024 study of adult food allergy found that about 6% of adults in the UK, around 2.4 million people, have a clinically confirmed food allergy. In a room of 80, the average UK guest count in Bridebook’s 2026 report, that is about five people (our rough calculation), before you count the vegetarians, the coeliacs and the guest who simply cannot face a mushroom.

It helps to know what your caterer already has to declare. The Food Standards Agency says that in the UK, food businesses must tell customers when they use any of 14 allergens as ingredients in the food and drink they provide. In October 2026 it lists them as:

• celery
• cereals containing gluten
• crustaceans
• eggs
• fish
• lupin
• milk
• molluscs
• mustard
• peanuts
• sesame
• soybeans
• sulphur dioxide and sulphites
• tree nuts

You need not print this list on your form. A guest may write about something that is not on it, and that note deserves the same care. Two extra lines help:

Please tell us which notes are allergies and which are preferences. If an allergy is serious, would you like our caterer to contact you?

If a guest would like that, pass their name and their note to the caterer, and let the caterer contact them.

Do not shorten, reword or judge what a guest writes. Send every note to your caterer and your venue exactly as it was written, with the guest’s name, and leave the cooking to them.

What about children’s meals?

Ask the caterer about a children’s menu and its age limit, then say it plainly. Change the age in this line to their answer:

Children aged 12 and under are served the children’s menu. Please tell us about any allergies in the box below.

If older children may choose from the adult menu, say so, and the course questions cover them too.

What should you leave off the reply?

Drinks, the flavour of the cake, song requests and seat preferences. Each is better settled on the day, or by the two of you. The reply gets the facts the kitchen needs, and nothing else.

What do you send your caterer, and when?

Send one list, one row per guest, as soon as most replies are in, then the final version on the caterer’s date. The columns we suggest:

A week before the wedding, send the allergy notes again on their own, to the caterer and to the venue manager.

This is information about your guests’ health. Share it only with the people who cook and serve, and delete spare copies after the wedding.

Send your caterer the five questions at the top of this note this week: their answers will shape the form, the list and your reply date.