Wedding Catering Tip: Table Place Setting

I know this will wedding catering tip make me sound like a snob, but I don’t care.

If you are serving a plated salad followed by a plated or buffet dinner, please confirm with your caterer that you are getting a salad fork, salad knife, dinner fork and dinner knife. You do not need to save used forks and knives from your first course to be used for your second course. This investment of about $3 per guest is not going to break the bank, but it is going to elevate your table setting and your guest experience. 

Update from 2025: I was still so fed up with bad wedding silverware set ups, I wrote about proper catering table settings two years after this post 

Photo by: Kurstin Roe

Lessons Learned is a recurring series about the little and sometimes not so little things I learn at each and every wedding. Even after 14 years and 200+ weddings under my belt, I still learn something new at each one! 

If you like this kind of wedding advice, we have other wedding advice posts such as how many seats fit at a wedding table; how long should a wedding toast be; how to write your own ceremony script; and how to plan a wedding in six months.