Seating chart poster or escort cards

I honestly think the first one is easier for you. Probably less expensive too.

I personally find escort cards easier. People just have to pick theirs up and walk to the table. If they get distracted on the way by socializing, they don't have to turn around and go back to the board. It's also easy to change up last minute.

Jamie Wolfer has an amazing video that breaks down every option for seating charts and pros and cons of each. It's called "EVERYTHING You Need to Know About SEATING CHARTS"

Escort cards always.


There a post yesterday on this same topic and someone mentioned that you can get Avery cards to print at home or the colored card stock tent cards blank on Etsy inexpensively, compared to a quote that was mentioned of at least $50 for a seating chard board. That is before any typos or needing to move a guest last minute.
Escort cards are easier to read, Plus the guest grabs their card and goes instead of trying to squeeze into a traffic jam of an unreadable chart and forgetting the table assignment halfway there when they get sidetracked with conversations.

View Quoted Comment During Covid anyway, daughter's venue required seating chart with last names listed first so that people could easily find their names and instead of cards so people wouldn't be reaching/congregating.

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Interesting. Was there an attendant to monitor this? Quickly finding your name on a card and going seems like less contact than people congregating to read a chart. Unless only one person at a time was allowed to read it. Was the chart large clear print? Because many are not with small print and fonts that are difficult to read far away or up close.

I think escort cards are better if you have a bigger guest list, so you don't have 150 people crowding around trying to look at the same sign. But for a really intimate gathering a seating chart may work (and it could be cheaper)

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Escort cards are appropriate for any size guest list.

Again, price out both options because as mentioned above, another bride said in the post yesterday on the same topic that the cheapest they could find for one poster board was $50+ compared to $10-20ish maximum for escort cards.

There wasn't an attendant but the font was large enough where you could read it like 10 feet away😁

I always prefer escort cards. We bought tented cards on Amazon, printed them at home, and were able to make last minute changes. With seating charts I find myself having to double check myself as well as standing there to find my name (my vision is bad, even with correction).

I worked at an event center for years in college and I can tell you at almost every wedding, half the guests don't check for seating arrangements or escort cards. We'd get to the end of the night and half the cards wouldn't be touched. I'm doing something like the first option but on a mirror, then when the wedding is over we can remove the lettering and still have a useful mirror. Not spending money on things that just end up in the trash.

We used a seating chart and it worked out just fine.

We used a seating chart that I purchased from Etsy for $6. Printed them off for $10 ar staples.

View Quoted Comment Ok, I was planning on doing this too. What size did you use and did it have color to it? Do you know if they charge extra for printing a poster in color?

View Quoted Comment The template has various designs & colors to choose from (even fonts). I downloaded the final seating chart onto a flash drive. Staples didn’t charge anything different from color to white paper. They did charge more for thicker paper.

View Quoted Comment Ok did you glue it onto a foam board after?

View Quoted Comment If you get thick enough paper you won’t have to glue. Ask your venue what they have that you can use to prop it up. Ours had mini clothes pins- kind of like this...

Escort cards are budget friendly in my opinion because you can do it yourself! there's plenty of free templates and you can just print it off your own printer.

but i personally like one big board better because it's less set up and if you have a lot of names, it's kind of more practical in my opinion

For a smaller guest list, I'd say a table seating chart would be most effective, and you can easily create one on Canva for free, then save your design and upload it onto Vistaprint to print off! I did this with our Unplugged Ceremony sign and only paid like $45 which to me wasn't too bad for a large sign.

For a larger guest list (like ours of 195) I'd do escort cards so the sign isn't too crowded with names & tables.

ESCORT CARDS ALWAYS

Also, if you do decide to do a poster, PLEASE orgainize it alphabetical order and just list the table number like:

John Smith, Table 8

James Smyth, Table 9

It's a giant pain in the butt to try and find names when they're organized by table like in your picture.

View Quoted Comment Good idea. That makes great sense!