Seating guide

Printable wedding place cards from your guest list

Place cards go wrong when they are a design project that starts before the seating is finished. They are the last printout, made from the list of people who have a chair.

One list, or the cards will lie

A place card is a claim that a named person has a particular chair. If the name is not on the seated list, the card should not exist. If the name moved tables on Thursday, every card printed on Tuesday is a rumour.

The way this fails is ordinary. The escort cards are exported Tuesday. Someone cancels. The place cards are printed Friday from the corrected list, or from the old one, depending on which file was open. A guest is at table 4 on the door and table 7 on the plate. That split is the whole argument of escort cards versus place cards. Generate both from the plan you will actually use.

What to write

• First and last name, matching the escort card and the invitation. A card that says "Mr Baker" fails as soon as two Bakers share a table, which at a wedding they will.
• No table number, unless the card is doing double duty because you skipped escort cards. Then it is an escort card you have put on a plate, and the guest still needed a sign at the door to find the plate.
• One card per chair, including a child who has a seat. A high chair can have a small card or none. Do not print a second card that implies a second meal.
• Meal marks only if the kitchen asked, a small icon or letter, not a sentence. The card is for the guest finding a chair, not for the waiter squinting at a paragraph.

Print in table order, not alphabetical order

Alphabetical is how a guest searches a rack of escort cards at the entrance. It is a terrible order for place cards, because you set tables, not the alphabet. Print grouped by table, and within the table in the order you will walk around it, so a stack for table 7 goes down in a circle without a sort on the spot.

If you only assigned tables and not seats, you can still print the names for that table and let people choose chairs. Say so. A place card that implies an assigned seat, set down at random, creates a problem you did not have.

Stock, and the test sheet

Tent cards on Avery 5302 are four to a letter sheet, with a specific fold. The measurements and the way a misaligned "fit to page" setting ruins a packet are in the Avery 5302 place card template. Blank card and a word processor also work. What does not work is a screenshot of a spreadsheet scaled until it looks like a card. Print real text so a long name can wrap instead of becoming a blur.

Print one sheet on ordinary paper and hold it against the stock before you commit the packet. A 160-guest wedding is 40 sheets at four cards each, with nothing spare if you bought one packet. Reprinting is normal. Reprinting because the fold was a quarter-inch off is optional.

When to print

After the seating is finished, not when the design is finished. A plain card with today's table is better than a pretty card with yesterday's. If you are still waiting on a handful of RSVPs, print the tables that are done and leave those names off the run. Do not invent cards for maybes.

The list those names come from should already be the seating chart, not a second spreadsheet you hope is current. If you are still in the sheet, export once, print once, and stop editing the copy you exported from.

Questions people ask