Favorite foods at a wedding vs your menu?

Our venue has a full restaurant as well, so we originally were going to go with basic, crowd pleaser wedding food - italian style chicken, steak, and crab cakes. The only one of those three we ended up keeping was the crab cakes after our tasting. Not because the other options weren't good but they're over done at weddings. We had a couple trusted people come over and we pieced our menu together with some extra opinions. We ended up with a chicken and dumplings dish that people RAVED about. We also did a prime rib carving station. And we had a risotto and gnocchi for "pasta" course. We had tons of appetizers during cocktail hour but the real crowd please was a buffalo chicken empanada (it was my favorite thing I ate too - I actually had them bring me a whole plate).

We also skipped the chicken- because it’s overdone, but also felt it wasn’t formal enough for our event. We went with braised beef short rib, olive oil crusted halibut, and a wild mushroom ravioli (vegetarian) as our entrees. The meat options came with seasonal veggies and polenta. Ravioli came with just the veggies. Everyone loved the options.
Overall we had 3 appetizers: Brie pastry purses, fried Mac and cheese balls, and another that I’m forgetting with meat.
1 endive salad starter. Dessert was 3 options of wedding cake flavors. Highly recommending setting up a meal tasting opportunity as this will tell you what your vendor prepares best. Just because you love fish, doesn’t mean you’ll love theirs. Take notes at it and then decide what you’ll serve based on how things tasted and what your guests will enjoy.

For cocktail hour, we did bacon jalapeno deviled eggs (gluten free), vegetarian spring rolls (vegetarian), and pork pot stickers. We really just wanted to cover all the dietary restrictions our guests had rather than just pick things we liked and risk someone not getting to eat anything. One of the things our venue offered was a mac and cheese bar, which I thought would have been yummy, but we opted against it as it probably would have been too much food right before dinner.

The dinner itself was a salad course, a plated dinner, and then cake as the dessert course. We had 2 duet plate options for entrees as it gave guests more options and increased the likelihood that there would be something everyone liked. I also really wanted to do plated dinners as it cuts down on a lot of issues that come with buffets or family style meals (people feeling snubbed when they get called last, people taking too much or dishes running out, cross contamination, etc). Our cake had 3 tiers, and my husband and I each picked a cake flavor/ filling we liked and then took our baker's suggestion for the anniversary tier.

For our late night snacks, we did a combo of a dessert bar (mini crème brulees, lemon tarts, and truffle pops), cheeseburger sliders and mini cokes, and mini grilled cheeses with tomato soup shooters. We figured that covered people who would want something sweet vs savory, and all the dietary restrictions.

Twenty years ago my sister had shellfish for her cocktail hour and I didn't get any because the limo got lost. So we added a raw bar for our wedding, and as we are on the coast, selections were local and fresh. We also went with other more veg- based cocktail stations so our guests would not be overstuffed and sleepy for the 3- course plated dinner (beef short rib or black cod entrees). Some weddings are too meat heavy for me.