Escort Cards

pzavecz

What's the best way to do escort cards for the following:

Families - do you just put them all on one card if they are sitting at the same table, i.e. "The Smith Family," without having to list out all the kids names, or do you have to give the kids a separate card?  Seems silly to have separate cards for young kids, especially babies...so I wasn't sure.

Unmarried couple with children, with the children having the last name of the father

Unwed couple - Is one card ok?  I've seen it done both ways but don't know what is correct or if it even matters.

StephJean83

Every wedding I've been to that has done escort cards has done each card for each person, babies too. Weddings we've gone to where they knew both mine and FH's name we had card with our own name on them but if they knew FH, my card said FH Guest or visa versa with only know my name. I also have only seen escort cards at sit down dinners so the waitstaff knows who ordered the chicken or the beef. If you do a sit down dinner and one escort card per family/couple how will the waitstaff know John wanted chicken and Jane is having the vegetarian meal? Or at the rare buffet wedding when the bride and groom don't want people clinking glasses to prompt them to kiss. My sister did a buffet dinner but tables were dances and you had to do the dance to get them to kiss. She still did an escort card for every person including our 3 month old nephew.

jessicabessica

You can do escort cards by person or by couple.  We did by couple.  I would not distinguish between married couples and unmarried couples--give all couples 1 card if that's what you're doing.  

We gave all kids their own card, but all the kids that attended were old enough to sit separately from their parents.  If we had had younger kids, I think we probably would have still done individual cards for the kids, but I don't think it's necessary.  I would put individual kids' names on the cards, not "The Smith Family."  It seems like that definitely won't work if you're inviting a lot of family that will have the same last name, too.

Ali092011

We did exactly what Jessica said. One card per couple, whether they were married, engaged, or dating. We had five kids under the age of 13, and each of them got his or her own escort card. However, when we were packing everything up at the end of the night, I noticed that three of the kids hadn't taken their cards, probably because their parents just assumed they were sitting with them and didn't bother to find their names. So it's fine to put kids on the same card, but do list each child's first name.

ETA: The way we did unmarried couples/married couples with different last names was similar to how we did the invitations. We listed the person we knew best first and their SO next. We had the escort cards set up alphabetically, and guests knew to look under the last name of the person we knew better.

achiduck

We did one per person because we have use them to indicate to the venue staff what each guest wanted to eat.

Had we not done plated meals we would have done one per couple.

TurtlesAllTheWayDown

I did one per person. If you had a seat, you got a card. That it made it really simple.