Seating Charts-how did you identify meal options for guests?!

We had done a seating display instead of individual cards for guests but we had a sitdown family style meal.

My cousin did a seating display as well but had meal choices so she did another card at each place setting with name & meal

Our venue is having the waiters go to each table and ask the guests what theyre having but ill be providing a rough estimate on how many dishes to prepare.

I've been to a lot of weddings with no place cards at the table so there has to be a method to it. Like many others have sugegsted ask the coordinator how they would prefer it to be done so then you know it's fool proof. That's what I plan on doing.

And I'm in the same boat with others, which I don't think is that odd. When you get an RSVP card there (in my experience) has never been a line for entree for each person to choose, usually it's at the bottom after the names and you just choose. If my FH and I have chosen different things I've just left it, never wrote MY name after MY choice and vice versa. Annnnd those wedding meals went just fine, no chaos!

Stressing about people having to swap plates is silly. If worse comes to worse just double check with that person if it is a NECCESITY of the waitstaff. I think overall if they know how many chicken, beef, pork or fish at a table it will all work out.

I worked in catering and banquets for quite a while. Many brides put stickers or little marker dots on the bottom corner of the place card so the serving staff knows what each guest is eating. The color coding traditionally is this: red = beef. yellow = chicken. blue = fish. green = veggie meal. Hope this helps.

If you aren't doing individual place cards you could always just tell the catering that there are 5 people eating chicken and 3 people eating beef at table #9 and the servers could just ask whose who once they got there?

The only problem I see in asking people what they ordered is they may have forgotten what they RSVP'd or they might change their mind. I guess its not a big deal I'd you're just using estimates, but something to keep in mind.

I agree with Aimee B...as long as the table is known to have 5 beef, 3 chicken, etc and generally speaking, you know that a certain couple is having one of each, if they server starts to place it wrong, they couple can switch. Soooo not stressing about this piece

I agree with Aimee B...as long as the table is known to have 5 beef, 3 chicken, etc and generally speaking, you know that a certain couple is having one of each, if they server starts to place it wrong, they couple can switch. Soooo not stressing about this piece

That's pretty much the kind of stuff I noted on my gimongous seating chart document.

"Table 9 - 7 adults plus 1 highchair, 8 place settings total. Family style portion for 6 adults (babies and toddlers just ate for free off the family style dinner); 1 special adult meal for peanut allergy. Note - 2 people have Celiac and I would like for them to get a slice of my gluten-free cake tier after dinner. Also none of them speak English and there's a short guy with glasses who can't handle his booze, please help us out and water down his rum and cokes if you can. Thank you."

ETA all that stuff was not going on at the same table but you get the idea.

I'm just doing table numbers and by place cards per family/rsvp , so I will give the catering a list of how many chicken or steak per table....