Dietary Restrictions and Event Menu Planning

With all the friends and family we all have, many of us do not get the opportunity to dine with everyone at any given time. When planning an event, especially when you are allowing your guests to bring a guest, it's important to consider people's dietary restrictions when planning the menu.

One item that is often overlooked is a vegetarian menu item. Considering there are almost 4.7 million adult vegetarians residing within the U.S., there's bound to be a few you were not even aware were vegetarians attending your event. Speaking to your caterer to be sure they offer an off-menu, by request option will be appreciated by guests. The fact they have an option besides side dishes they can dine on makes a great impression as many events they attend will not have this consideration.

Vegetarian guests will often not bother to notify you of their dietary preference mostly out of politeness as to not be a hindrance to the host of the event. For guests who have severe allergies (nuts, gluten, soy, etc.) they if attending will more than likely contact you in advance to let you know what they are allergic to, or will be sure to ask waiters, etc. to ask the chef about what items they can safely eat. In either case it's a good subject to broach with your caterer in advance as to what items are available for guests with allergies or what their policy is so you are prepared in advance. With food allergies being so prevalent nowadays it's better to be safe than run the risk of having a guest hospitalized later.

Have you ever been to an event where the host has taken dietary restrictions in account? If so was it something you appreciated or didn't feel was necessary?

What Determines Stationery Costs? Part 4: Design Method

In the final part of my four part series, I'll discuss how your invitation design factors into the cost of your overall invitations.

In general there are two different ways you can purchase invitations.

First would be to purchase from a studio, designer or stationery shop a pre-made design of which you have your own information inserted into it. For example, if you go to a local wedding shop they might have catalogs of invitation samples in which you can choose a design you like. This will always be less expensive because most of the work (i.e. the main components of the design, which is the most time consuming) is already completed. All that's left is inserting your info and producing the invitations for you. These invitation designs are usually purchased in a pre-fixe manner. For example, each invitation costs $3/ea so 100 invitations would run you $300.00

Custom invitation design would be your second option and will always come at a higher cost. Using this option, the design is completely customized to your own needs and standards. So with this in mind, many hours go into creating this design for you from scratch, hence the higher cost. Depending on how the designer works, they may offer pre-fixe pricing or may charge a separate design fee aside from the cost of production. All designers work differently so check with designers you like for a pricing information or a price quote.

Hopefully this four part series was helpful to learning what cost factors impact the price you are quoted on your event invitations and stationery. Don't forget no matter what your stationery budget may be, there are always creative ways to create exactly what you are looking for by simply prioritizing which of these four elements are most important to you and working from there.

Spooky-Elegant Halloween Party Invites

One of my best friends decided to throw a Halloween Party at the Norwood Club in New York City, and contacted me to create her invitations for her. One thing that excited me designing these is it was one of the first parties besides my own wedding that I'd actually get to attend the party I'm designing the invitations for. Yay!

Mariana has a fantastic sense of style, especially when it comes to fashion. So it was really important to me to create invitations that I felt suited and reflected her and her sense of style as well as the venue (which is pretty ritzy). Also being they were for a Halloween party, I wanted to be sure they were still sort of quirky and spooky at the time. My favorite elements of these invitations was the torn edge black backer and the great handwritten script font used to highlight the important details.

What were you for Halloween? I love hearing people's creative Halloween costume ideas, so be sure to leave a comment!