Fake food allergies have no place at my wedding

WHEN I asked for dietary requirements from wedding guests, I wanted to know if they were going to drop dead in the presence of peanuts, not their desire to avoid carbs, writes Katy Hall.

THERE are two kinds of food allergies in this world: the real ones and the self-diagnosed ones.

The first ones are the kind of legitimate health conditions confirmed by medical experts that see people carry EpiPens with them everywhere, live in fear of anaphylaxis striking, and look as though they’ve just learned Hitler has risen from the bunker when they read the words ‘may contain traces of peanuts.’

Then there’s the latter. The ‘since eliminating gluten from my diet completely I feel so much less bloated’ people. The ‘I read I Quit Sugar and suddenly it just all made sense’ people. The ‘the specialist told me there were no identifiable allergies, but I think I’ll get a second opinion’ people.

That last group of people, aside from being the absolute worst, are also the nightmare people to have come to your wedding. And I should know, I’m currently planning one.

When we first began sending out invitations a few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I agreed that in an effort to assure the people we collectively love that we do, in fact, care about their wellbeing, we would include a dietary requirements section.

I want to know if you’re going to drop dead from eating shellfish, not your preference for raw tomatoes over cooked.

This way, we thought, it just confirms what we mostly already know. It will remind us of who are still vegetarians and pescetarians, who has become a vegan since we last spoke and who must be kept away from shellfish at all costs, we reasoned. No alternating chicken and beef here, folks! We are a woke couple here to help you live your best, diarrhoea-free life. But to quote Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, big mistake. Huge.

See, in inviting just 100 people to spend an evening with you — a number that apparently constitutes an “intimate” sized wedding — chances are you’ll already know who has what allergies or dietary requirements because these are the people you’ve spent your entire life shuffling alongside buffet tables with at family gatherings or having round to dinner for years.

But in the weeks since first sending out our wedding invites, I’ve had people share the kinds of fish they prefer (sashimi over baked white fish); how they like their tomatoes served (cooked over fresh); what types of desserts would suit (gluten and sugar free tarts over gelato or petit fours, if possible), and most offensively, the people who have listed gluten and sugar intolerances despite not actually being intolerant at all.

For weeks, I’ve tried to ignore this simmering rage and channel the grace of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. It’s just a preference, like someone preferring red wine over white wine. What does it matter? Telling the caterer to make 20 gluten-free tarts is no great difficulty for me.

Nobody has ever claimed to have an allergy to champagne. (Pic: supplied)

But when I mentioned to one faux allergist I hadn’t realised she’d eliminated of an entire food group from her diet, she explained, “I haven’t. Well, not really. It makes me feel bloated if I overeat it, and I know I’ll eat heaps of Maccas when I’m hungover the next day so I want to try and avoid it at the wedding if I can. Save up my allowance.”

“Right. Okay, sure,” I replied dumbfounded, realising that somehow in deciding to legally bind myself to someone I’ve unwittingly become a babysitter for the drunk and untrustworthy bowels of my friends and family. “So if you have some it won’t make you physically ill or like, be glued to the toilet for hours?”

“Oh, no. But you know me when I’m drunk; I’ll eat anything in sight.”

The problem isn’t so much that people are self-diagnosing medical conditions (mazel tov, if that’s how you want to live your life), it’s that they’re roping other people into the farce.

And to be perfectly blunt, pretending to have a medical condition so that you can palm off your responsibility to self-moderate to another person is just a bit of twat move. If you don’t like something, don’t eat it. No one’s ever claimed to have an allergy to champagne or tequila, have they?

The thing about being the allergist who cries wolf is that it’s only one step up from the person who says they’re a doctor when they’re actually a Ph.D. graduate in soil erosion. And that’s not a good place to be.

I’m not suggesting that this should be a ‘get what you’re given’ situation. If something is going to make you sick, you should tell someone. Preferably me and not the paramedic we have to call during the speeches because one of the canapés was unknowingly laced with crabmeat. But for as long as you’re eating, drinking and being merry on another person’s house deposit, maybe have some snacks at home before you leave if you’re that fussy?

Katy Hall is a writer and producer at RendezView. Follow her on Twitter at @katyhallway.