Top 3 Place Card Ideas

January 16, 2022

Place cards are a small detail that is often forgotten when planning your wedding design. There are so many benefits to assigning your guests a seat, and so many different design options you can do.

The most common question we get is if you need a place card. There are a couple of factors to consider:

Do your guests have a meal choice in advance? Example, beef, chicken, salmon or vegetarian
Do your guests have a lot of allergies? (We always recommend asking for allergies on your rsvp card!)
Do you want certain members of your family to have a certain view at their tables? I often see brides and grooms wanting their parents to have the best view of the head table or podium.

If you have answered yes to any of those questions, you need place cards! Not only do they help with the overall seating arrangement, place cards are for the servers as well. Think about how time-consuming and what an interruption it is for servers to ask every person if they have any allergies or what meal they ordered. It slows down dinner servers and doesn’t seem as professional as having it already laid out in advance.

While there are several design options to choose from, we have narrowed down the top three place card designs we’ve seen in 2020

Personalized tent card place cards wedding

Tent Cards

The most traditional kind of place cards are tent cards. They stand on their own and have your guest’s name printed directly on the card. There’s also an option to add the meal choice on the top corner (think B for Beef or S for Salmon) along with an indication for allergies. Say bye to the days of a coloured dot in the corner – let’s make sure the place cards match all the other wedding stationery!

If you’d like to make the place cards a touch more elegant, adding a custom monogram or wax seal will completely change the look of your tent card.

Photo by Nicole Amanda Photography

Scroll Place Cards

One of our new favourite styles that have become really popular this year are scroll cards. These elegant cards hang directly off the wine glasses at the table setting. They can include your monogram for an extra detail, and your meal choice if needed. Once guests are seated, they can take their place card off their wine or water glass and start sipping.

These also will work as escort cards! If you have an entrance table with champagne glasses, hanging these scroll place cards off of them with the table number are a great alternative to a seating chart.

Photo by Lace and Luce

Outdoor country wedding with menu and wax seal

Personalized Menu

We are firm believers that guest’s menus should be personalized to what they ordered. If you gave the option for them to pick meals in advance and they chose vegetarian, why are we showing the beef and chicken option on the menu?

This personalized menu includes the meal choice and guest’s name with an added touch of a wax seal to tie everything together. This puts everything on one card to save having the additional place card option. Always check with your venue first before ordering a specific type of place card! This option may not work for servers as menus often get moved so it’s not very clear to see the meal choice.

Photo by Holly McMurter Photographs