Escort Cards vs Seating Charts with Saundra Hadley

Do you have a decision to make about whether to do a seating chart or escort cards for your seating assignments? Both options are great, but there are definitely reasons why you should consider one versus the other. I have Sandra Hadley of Planning Forever Events with me who is a wedding and event planner and wedding celebrant and she's going to chat with me about seating charts versus escort cards. And with the differences between these two, and a place card. Sandra is the owner of Planning Forever Events, an event planning business based in Evansville, Indiana. For the last 17 years, she's known to create and design weddings and celebrations that become treasured memories forever. You can also catch her producing and delivering wedding tips and on our local ABC morning lifestyle show. And she has a four year old Australian Labradoodle, which you can follow on Instagram at Captain Doodle Head who has almost almost completed his training to be a therapy dog to bring joy to sick people at hospitals or nursing homes.

I know you're going to especially love this episode. If you don't know the first thing about escort cards and seating charts, or why you should consider one versus the other, or skip both and do open seating. I am not suggesting that, but in this episode, we will also talk through how the location of your wedding plays a factor if you're inside or outside the cost differences between them and how you can be creative. We'll also talk about some big no no's, and some other really extravagant ways to seat your guests to dinner. Let's go ahead and get into the interview with Sandra.

I came to Sandra specifically for this for this podcast. because we've had discussions about this in the past seating Charts vs escort cards.  So, let’s jump in and talk about the positives and negatives and both. So what would you say? Are some of the things that are good about escort cards? But first, let’s talk about what each of them is. Sandra shared that when she started her business (17 years ago), you’d have a big wedding of 250-300 and it would be open seating. It wasn’t even considered to assign seats. As you can imagine, everyone looks for their friends and tries to sit with them. Now, it’s extremely common to assign tables, so that you can group people together and they don’t feel left out.

With escort cards, the guests need to know what table, they're going to be sitting at seated at a table. So they come up, and they find their name. And they say table one. Excellent. So then you go into the reception. And you look for table one because it's marked by a table number, right? Right. Okay, so that's an escort card, their individual cards that tell where you're going to be seated.
A seating chart will be the same thing, but it's on a 24 by 36, a 20 by 18. Chart. And it's there all in one place, it's not taking up a lot of room. It can be a list of names and numbers or you can get creative with it. Place cards are the third element. Not all weddings have this, but a lot do. If you have allowed your guests to pre determine their entrée before they come to the wedding. They get their invitation. there's a there's a poultry there's a fish, there's a vegetarian, whatever, and they've selected it, well, then you have to be you have to a seat for them, based on their dinner selection and it’s all for the catering and the staff. So they can get the food out in an optimum time, not ruining your entrees. And they denote it so it's a place card. So it's Saundra Hadley, I come and I find my seat. I'm at table one, I go over to table one, I have selected the vegetarian option, then I look at that particular table and then my seat at the table based on the place card. Every table, has it narrowed down for the catering staff to know - Table One has 3 chicken, 1 fish, 4 veggie options.

It is more work to do it this way, because it is is so specific and you are narrowing it down by seat. Your place card is your place setting. It’s your place at the table.

Now that we have a little bit of basic knowledge, let’s dig into each of these topics. Let’s start with Escort Cards.

Escort cards can be really fun and creative, because they don’t have to be cards. Yes - you can go to Michael's or Hobby Lobby or one of those places, when they say escort cards or whatnot on there is a folded 10 card that you print their name on it in table number. But we’ve also done macaroons as escort cards with a little toothpick in the top and a flag on the toothpick with the guests names. We’ve done skeleton keys where the persons name and number are on the key. We had one client that got married and her last name was Jones, so we ordered Jones sodas and personalized those. It had a picture of the couple at their engagement session. Like a fun photo on there. It was super fun. So everyone had a unique name and table number on each soda. We had the sodas chilled. So they we put them out and when we had to have it all it during cocktail hour, because I didn't want them to get warm. I had to laminate the the escort cards to avoid problems with any sweating from the drink.

Kelly shared about another couple she had recently that had a lot of details centered around their favorite vacation spot - Italy and their love for limoncello. We decided to include lemons in their wedding cake. It was like a lemon curd and lemon mousse cake. And then it was it was good. The bride made limoncello for all the guests. And we ordered these cute little bottles and had cute little labels made on the front of the label it had, please enjoy dining at table number. And then she had their name and their table number. So the little individual bottles of limoncello were the escort cards. You can have a lot of fun with escort cards.  You need to pay attention to the weather though, because if the wind blows and you have traditional escort cards, they’re gone in just a moment. The same thing with traditional place cards. It can be a nightmare. The ink can blur with rain to make them hard to read, so consider the weather if you are having an outside wedding.

It is also important to think how you will display things. People think that it’s just one little table and it won’t take up a lot of space, but if you are limited on space and then you have all your guests lined up and backed up at that one little take for 10 or 15 minutes, it can become a problem.

People can also lose escort cards or set them down, so that’s important to think about. Then they have no clue what table they are at. Again, this is important when determining the size and or item you’re using. We have had it where people want to have something hanging that needs to be cut down and that can be a real challenge. It sounds fun and beautiful, but the install can be a lot of work to keep things alphabetical and then you have to have scissors for people to cut things down over their head and enough to share and once they get cut down, they are no longer in the correct order. It’s important to think about the guest experience. Also, if it takes guests too long to find their escort card, then the food is being compromised, because it’s coming out and guests aren’t ready for it. They won’t remember the super cool escort display, but they will remember their prime rib was cold.

We’ve shared a bit about the negatives, but there are also some positives to escort cards. You can have a lot of fun with them and use them as a statement piece. Just consider all the factors - the weather, the item, how the guest will get it, will there be a long wait, etc.

Now, let's talk about seating charts. First of all, they are very clean and often easy. They are easy to decorate and you can put flowers or greenery around them. Again, it can be a statement piece. We had one this past year that was probably 7 feet tall. Gold edging, acryclic sheets that the calligrapher put the names and table numbers on. You can do calligraphy on nearly anything for a seating chart, think windows or mirrors, etc.

It’s important to consider the costs. You can go pretty inexpensive with a seating chart. You can send it off to a graphic designer, you can find them almost anywhere in on Etsy even, and have them send over just the file for you. Then send that over to staples, and have that sucker printed and mounted on a foam board. You can have it laminated or a nice matte look. There are a lot of places to go for printing like this. Often the local printer will do anywhere from $50 to like $85 for poster size print right there. You can put it on an easel to display.  You can also get creative with seating charts.

You can take any kind of vessel and have a calligrapher, write guest names in table numbers and have several of them on a table. So let's say you had some massive lanterns, glass lanterns, and let's see had five of them per table. And the calligrapher can write names and tables on each. They can go through A to C names on one; D through J on the next and so on. It is a seating chart, but it’s also a creative way to do it. There are ways beyond paper, that paper is by far, the quickest and easiest and most efficient way to do it. If you are going to work with a designer and printer, just plan ahead, so it’s not a last minute job request. Normally, I see them in a 24 hour turn around, so that is a positive if you have guests that make a last minute change to a seating chart.

There are some things to be aware of with seating charts and normally that is the font can be small and hard to read. It’s also important to think about the lighting of where the seating chart will be or the color and font you use. People love light pink blush, but it can be hard to read, even though it is pretty. Remember, the ultimate goal is you want to get people to their seats. Yes - you want it to be beautiful, but if it’s hard to read, it takes longer for people to figure out where to go.

Another point to consider - seating Charts should not be by table number. Let's pretend your name is John Adams. If your name was, if it was alphabetical, as it should be, yeah. Where would you know to look for your name? I would think I would look at the top left hand corner. Yes. Very top right. We read left to right. Yeah. And if your name was John Muffin, where would you look at my chart? Well, somewhere in the middle. Yeah, it's the last name. And your name was john Zenith, where would your name be? Very last right hand corner. It is much quicker to find your name when it is alphabetical and not by table number. Now imagine you do it by table number and each table has 12 people under it, you can to look through all the tables before you find your name. It can take much longer. In my 19 years, I have only had 2 times we have done it by table number and that was because the guest list was so small. For the most part, if you are going to do a seating chart - just make sure you do it alphabetically. Doing things alphabetically, can also let you change and make last minute adjustments if you have a cancellation.

I will say one little thing that I want to bring up with place cards that we touched on in the beginning, is that place cards can also serve as their meal choice. You can change the color of the ink or have a special emblem on there to notate their dinner selection. You can also do a menu to act as a personalized menu card / place card, so the persons name it at the top of the menu. Cards do get moved or set under the charger and then picked up by the caterer, so they can be beautiful for your photo, but if it’s not something more substantial than paper, they are thrown away pretty quickly.

And even though we have a difference of opinions on place cards, that’s okay, because we have different locations and different kinds of clientele. Everything that we stated about seating charts, and escort cards and place cards is very much applicable to every single wedding. We’ve both had weddings with greeters - one small and one really large. We had the greeters ask them their name, welcome them and then take them to their table.

Always consider the guest experience when you are trying to decide how to move forward.

You can listen to this episode in its entirety here.