Wedding receptions that move are all the rage. Rather than sitting guests down for sit-down meals, newlyweds now sate friends and family with an array of tiny tastes. Here, caterers provide a sample of sit-down menu alternatives that bring reception guests to their feet.BOLDLY GOING

Mingling-friendly menus are so popular, they make up 70 percent of Atlanta-based Bold American Catering wedding receptions, according to social sales manager Amanda Gall. Newlyweds' move to these menus is simple. “‘Distinctive’ is a word I hear in almost every initial conversation I have with couples, usually quickly followed with ‘but comfortable,’” she notes.

Sophisticated brides aren't above quirky station setups either. Bold American offers slushy stations, often set up beside elaborate dessert displays, where alcohol and mixers are combined in a wok set in dry ice to form a slush. One favorite, Gall notes, is a combination of blueberry vodka, lemonade and sugared frozen blueberries.

“In the South, we always lean heavily towards hors d'oeuvre menus or food stations,” says chef Charlie Giordano of Duvall Catering & Event Design in Charleston, S.C. So much so that Giordano reports that only 20 percent of brides opt for $50-a-head (on average) sit-down dinners. Heavy hors d'oeuvre are less expensive, often running $35 a head for food only, according to Giordano, due to less labor and less rental equipment for seating.

The California crowd is starting to embrace strolling wedding receptions as much as the South. While these menus aren't yet the standard, the move to movement-friendly menus is underway. Michele Fox Gott, president of catering consultants Center of Attention in Burbank, Calif., sees preferences skewing 60 percent toward formal sit-down dinners, 30 percent toward stations and 10 percent toward classic buffets. Here, sit-down dinners run roughly $90 to $110 for food alone. On the other hand, “Hors d'oeuvre can be more expensive than a sit-down dinner because each individual hors d'oeuvre is given handmade attention, quite different from making a batch of mashed potatoes,” Fox Gott says.

FOOD AT THE CENTER OF ATTENTION

This menu — developed by An Catering of Beverly Hills, Calif. — started with a flight “to tease the tummy,” Center of Attention's Michele Fox Gott says. With the bride and groom's arrival at 7 p.m. came heavier options, as well as an Ice Station with Bloody Mary oyster shooters and Fire Station with spicy ingredients to make your own wraps. The couple cut the cake at 9:30, and by 11, Fox Gott determined it was time to offset the effects of the alcohol. The menu's cost, which Fox Gott deemed “not that bad,” was $80 per person.