This is the final entry in my Covid Wedding Planning mini-series. If you missed any of the previous entries, click the links to read about how to socially distance your ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception entertainment. This week we’re going to talk about dinner!

As I’ve mentioned previously, the more you can do outside, the safer you will be. Even if you are dining outside, you should still implement these safety tips. You literally cannot be too careful during a global pandemic.

How to Arrange Dinner Tables

At a typical wedding reception, we would have 60” rounds that seat 8-10 people, 72” rounds that seat 10-12 people, or long banquet tables seating 8-12 people. This is not the way to go right now. Instead, you want to think more like a restaurant.

Tables should seat two, four, or six people, maximum. Only people who are part of the same household should be seated together, unless they have formed a “Covid bubble.” If you’re not familiar with this term, it’s when two households agree to socialize with each other and no one else. It allows for people to spend time together without significantly increasing the risk of infection from outside sources.

The only way to know for sure if two households have formed a Covid bubble is to ask them. So don’t choose this option unless you’re prepared to do a lot of leg work on the front end. You presumably already know which guests live in the same household, because you mailed invitations to them based on who lives together.

You will need to talk with your venue or rental company to find out what their options are when it comes to table sizes. Most venues only keep the standard (larger) tables on hand for weddings and events. Rental companies usually have larger inventories, but even they are unlikely to have small tables in the same quantities as they have larger tables.

If you can’t acquire smaller tables, then you’ll have to use the larger tables but seat fewer people at each table. The most important thing is to not mix households or people who aren’t already seeing each other regularly.

Ideally, each table should be six feet away from any other table. This will be challenging (perhaps impossible) to achieve in an indoor space with 60” round tables. So again, if you can hold dinner outside, that’s your safest option.

TL;DR here’s the video version

Pre-Plated Dinner Service is Safer

Having pre-plated meals served to individuals by wait staff is significantly safer than a buffet. First, it cuts down on the number of people moving around. If guests stay seated and only masked wait staff move around, there’s less danger of germs being spread throughout the room.

Water should be poured by masked wait staff into guests’ glasses, rather than having pitchers of water on the tables for guests to self-serve. Bread should be pre-plated with the meal instead of being put in a communal basket on the tables. Salt and pepper can be provided in small paper packets rather than in communal shakers on each table.

Buffet Safety if Pre-Plated Dinner is Not an Option

If you must have a buffet, there are a number of precautions that will have to be taken.

Limit the number of guests at the buffet

Usually we release two tables at a time to go through the buffet. We can’t do that now. People will need to stand six feet apart from each other, so you’ll need to limit the number of people who are in line at the buffet at any given time. Families who are seated together can go through the buffet together without having to stand six feet apart.

No self-service of food items

Instead of guests dishing out their own food, masked and gloved servers will handle food service. This has the added advantage of forcing portion control on your guests, lol.

Plastic shielding should be used

There should be a plastic barrier shielding the servers from the guests so that guests don’t breathe on the food. Obviously there needs to be an opening in the partition so that the servers can reach through and dish out the food.

This is going to give your wedding buffet a feeling of being in a cafeteria. If that bothers you, then you’ll want to ditch the buffet altogether and move to a pre-plated dinner service.

How to Handle Dessert Service

Much like dinner service, the days of a long dessert buffet table stacked with goodies for guests to graze through are gone. At least for the foreseeable future.

If you’d like to do a variety of desserts, you’ll either need to do a safe buffet like the one described above, or have a selection of desserts pre-plated and served to guests individually by wait staff.

If you are serving wedding cake as dessert, it should be sliced and plated in the kitchen and served to guests at their dinner tables. It used to be common for staff to slice the cake and plate it in the kitchen and then place the cake plates on a communal table where guests could pick up a slice if they wanted one. That’s out the window too.

The Wedding Cake

No one wants to hear this, and it pains me to say it, but the days of having your wedding cake on display throughout the reception are gone. It’s unsafe to have something people are going to eat sitting out for long periods of time. It increases the risk of contamination.

If you are planning a cake cutting ceremony, the cake should be brought out just before the cutting ceremony. The photographer will need a few minutes to photograph it, but no one else should be allowed to approach the cake. As a planner and frequent wedding guest who loves to take photos of wedding cakes, this makes me sad. But it’s safer this way!

Coffee and Tea Service

Again, we usually set out a buffet table of coffee, decaf, hot water, tea bags, sugar, creamer, and cups for all of it. Nope, nope, nope. Can’t happen.

You’re probably tired of hearing me say this, but it’s either going to have be a protected buffet or individual service to tables by wait staff.

Everything is Changing

Weddings as we knew them are over. At least until we get a vaccine for Covid-19 and it’s no longer a serious threat to society. As I write this on June 30, 2020, wedding gatherings are still illegal in the state of California. Unauthorized family and social gatherings are the reason why Covid cases have spiked. It’s unclear at this point when we’ll be allowed to have wedding receptions again. But it’s clear that big weddings are off the table for a while and that we are going to have to implement a variety of safety measures that will change the feeling of weddings.

If this comes as a surprise to you, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But this is our new reality. The wedding you envisioned may no longer be possible, but you can still have a special day. Just remember that the only thing that really matters is that you get to marry the person you want to spend your life with. Everything else is details.