Escort card/place card/meal choice confusion - help!

jacquelyng1215

Maybe my mind has just turned into wedding planning mush at this point, but I'm trying to figure out how we're going to do our escort cards/place cards and am not sure how to accomplish this. 

Our tables will have destination names, and for the escort cards we're simply using the DIY fold-overs from the Brides magazine collection.  I was simply planning to have these on tables in the cocktail hour area, assuming guests would find their card and take it to their table with them--not having additional place cards at the table.  Quite frankly, I don't really care which seat at the table they sit at. 

However, if we do this, I'm not sure what to do about the following... we have three meal options.  We'll know what people have chosen based on their RSVPs.  It gets tricky, though, when a family of four RSVPs (or a even a couple).  We were planning to indicate their meal choice with a colored gem stone stuck to the front of their escort/place card, but I don't know if Jane, John or Jimmy Doe wants the chicken.  Make sense?  Ideas on how to solve this dilemma?  The only thing I can think of is simply giving the hotel the #s of each meal we need, and having servers ask when they bring out the meals.

pnutkitten

Maybe instead of putting the colored gems on the individual place cards, you could put them on the card that has the table name/number. That way, the servers can look at the gems and know how many of each entree is at that table - and then they can ask from there. I dont know how else to do it, unless you go back and ask everyone what they want specifically.

SaraAndrew2010

I'm doing meal choices on the reply card as well and will probably put some kind of color-coded decal on the escort cards.  On the reply card, we are asking guests to initial next to their entree choice.

I've also seen reply cards that were set up something like this:

Jane Doe:  Beef____    Chicken ____   Pasta _____
John Doe: Beef____    Chicken ____  Pasta _____

Meagan78

I've seen color-coded and A, B. C.  I think it's mostly to help the servers, right?  Or is it to confirm guest choice.  I'm not sure.

angiem33

I was planning on just having the servers confirm meal choice with the guest when they sit.  Does your venue need to know exactly who ordered what or do they just need a count? 

quotequeen

Have you already ordered your invitations?  I did invidualized response cards to solve the problem of not knowing who ordered what.  Many people say "please initial next to your entree choice" so that they know (unless there are people on the same invitation with the same initials).

Knittibell

What I would do is make a list of how many of each meal is at each table, and submit that to the venue: Ie, the "Paris" table has 3 fish, 4 beef  and 5 chicken

The problem you'll run into is that many times, people have absolutely no idea which one they chose by the time the wedding day arrives- they just can't remember. If they're just asked, they'll often pick whatever appeals to them on the day (maybe they selected beef but are in more of a fish mood, or saw the fish and now want that, etc).

If you don't know very specifically who ordered what, then giving the waiters the total count for each table would work the best, and then the guests can sort it out. I think this would be the simplest/easiest way to go about it.

jacquelyng1215

Thanks, all.  I think I'll go with giving the servers the # of each per table.  I know some people won't remember (one of my friends told me she's already forgotten and she literally just RSVPd!) but I'm sure they can sort it out.