---
title: 'Asking guests about dietary requirements'
description: 'Ask once, at reply time, in one open box. Why the tick list is the wrong shape, and what your caterer actually needs from you.'
source: 'https://envelope.love/blog/dietary-requirements-guests'
category: 'Replies'
published: '2026-07-30'
updated: '2026-07-30'
---

# Asking guests about dietary requirements

Ask once, at reply time, in one open box. Why the tick list is the wrong shape, and what your caterer actually needs from you.

This is the plain markdown copy of https://envelope.love/blog/dietary-requirements-guests, published by Love Envelope for machine readers. The page itself carries the same words.

Dietary needs are the one piece of guest information that costs money to get wrong, and the one most often collected twice.

The rule is simple. Ask once, at the moment somebody accepts, in the same form as the reply. Any later and you are asking a hundred people a second question, and the answer rate on a second question is dismal.

## Ask it as one open box

The instinct is a tick list. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, dairy free, nut allergy. It looks tidy and it is the wrong shape, for three reasons.

- It cannot tell a preference from an allergy, and those are completely different problems for a kitchen.
- It misses everything not on the list, which is most of what actually turns up.
- It invites people to tick something rather than explain something.

One box does better:

> Anything we should tell the kitchen?

Open, low pressure, and it produces the useful version: *coeliac, so genuinely no gluten rather than a bit less* is worth ten times more to a caterer than a ticked box.

## Only ask the people coming

Nobody who has declined needs feeding. Asking them anyway is noise on your form and a signal that nothing is being read.

And if the party is more than one person, make it clear the question covers everybody in it, since it is usually one person filling in the form for four.

## What your caterer needs

Two things, and neither is a list of ticks.

**A count by kind.** How many vegetarians, how many vegans, how many coeliacs. This is what drives the ordering.

**A name against every allergy.** Allergies are seat specific. The kitchen needs to know that the nut allergy is at table four in seat two, which means the answer has to be attached to a person rather than to a household.

That second point is the practical reason to ask for the names of everybody in a party at reply time rather than just a number. A note reading *one of us is coeliac* is not something a table plan can use.

## When to hand it over

Two weeks before, with the final numbers, in one message. Then again on the morning, verbally, for the serious allergies only. Kitchens change staff and the list on the wall is not always the list that was emailed.

## Menu choices are a separate question

Do not put the main course choice on the invitation. Three months out the menu is often not fixed, the guest has forgotten what they picked by September, and it doubles the length of a form whose only real job is a yes or a no.

Ask a fortnight before, when the numbers are already in and the menu is signed off. Fewer people, one question, and answers you can trust. The rest of the reply form is covered in [collecting replies without chasing anyone](https://envelope.love/blog/collect-rsvps-online).

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