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Top 10 Design Ideas For Placecards

When your guests search that placecard table for their name and table number, they’re finding their ‘home’ in your wedding world. So make that little card as beautiful and as creative as the rest of your printed wedding ensemble with the following design ideas:

1. Step away from the white
   In years past, placecards were only found in white or off-white card stock. Now, for any level of formality, you can bring your color palette to the table with a matching or coordinating shade of mocha, pink, sage green, silver or other colors.
   
   
2. Go deep
   Use a coordinating color for your font, such as an eggplant to stand out against a lavender card stock, or a deep red to stand out on pink card stock. Black is, of course, always an elegant choice for your placecards; just don’t feel you have to limit yourselves to black. Today, deep colors work for formal placecards.
   
   
3. Supersize it
   Use a larger font to make it easier for all of your guests to read the names on the cards. You don’t want guests squinting – the key to a great placecard is ease of location. No one wants to look inept when they can’t find their own name at the placecard table.
   
   
4. Use their initial
   Make it even easier for guests to locate their names by printing their last name initial on the left side of the card, an oversized monogram that leads them right to the B’s or the R’s. It’s an elegant touch to personalize their card. And speaking of their names, be sure to indicate your guest’s full name, such as Mr. Joe Smith III, when Mr. Joe Smith I and II are also invited to the wedding. And yes, it’s proper to use Mr., Ms., and Miss for single guests, while Mr. and Mrs. pairs can be listed on one placecard.
   
   
5. Layer your cards
   Take one light colored card stock (on which you’ve printed the guest’s name) and cut off ¼ or ½ inch of the bottom edge of the card. Then use a glue stick to affix that card over another, darker-hued place card. The result is an attractive edging that coordinates with your color scheme.
   
   
6. Wavering is good
   Use a patterned craft scissor, such as one that makes a scalloped edging, to cut off the bottom edge of your place card. You can do this with the layered card design as mentioned above, or cut the bottoms or sides of a single placecard. You can find these patterned scissors at the craft store or through scrapbooking Web sites. (For the same look without the scissors, check out Mountaincow.com’s scalloped place cards – just fold them in half after you’ve printed.)
   
   
7. Punch it again
   If you’ll use shaped hole punches in your menu card, or if you’ve used them in your invitation, wedding program or table card, match that theme by hole-punching a design in each placecard. This looks especially good when you use the two-layer placecard design described in idea #5. Choose your hole punch shape – round, a star, a butterfly, or any other shape that you find in wide variety at the craft store – and keep the location of the accent uniform on all of your placecards.
   
   
8. Fire up the glue gun
   Attach a mini-item to each of your placecards. It might be a tiny silk daisy, or a tiny seashell or starfish, a silver charm in a themed shape, a four-leaf clover….check the miniatures and charms sections of your craft store for personalized ideas.
   
   
9. Add a ribbon bow
   If you’ve designed your invitations with a ribbon bow tied at the top, create the same effect for your placecards. Expert event designers look for ways to tie in the tiniest of details as running themes in their décor, and this is one way they coordinate all of their print items. Just as with your invitations, either tie the ribbon through a single hole punch at the top of the card, or weave it through two closely-set hole punches. While it’s easier to use the same color of ribbon for all of your placecards, you can alternate the ribbon colors from light to dark when you have the exact arrangement of your alphabetized placecards in order.
   
   
10. Let it fly
    A big new trend in placecards is to print the name and table number on a single panel placecard (not the folded version), and then attach the card to a toothpick. Not any basic wooden toothpick, but rather one from the new class of embellished acrylic toothpicks found at party supply and gourmet stores. This oversized toothpick might have gemstone beads at the top, a snowflake, or other theme-shaped adornments. When you attach your card to the toothpick, it then becomes a flag that can sit displayed in a color- coordinated martini glass (perhaps a favor for the guest to take home). These flag placecards can also be set into a beautifully presented cheese platter or oversized loaves of bread. Talk to your caterer about designing a food element for your placecard ‘picks.’ Or insert them into planters featuring herbs, flowers or cut grass. Some beach wedding couples, for instance, insert their placecard flags into deep platters of beach sand, with shells or sea glass accenting the display.

Speaking of alternative presentations, rather than placing your lovely placecards in the usual even rows on the table, add something extra to their display. Set out a number of flat silver serving platters, and you can ‘serve up’ your placecards on those. Other presentation ideas: get square or circular flat mirrors from the craft store as a foundation for your placecards; set your placecards out on floral-edged platters (your florist can help you design these); or sprinkle the table around your placecards with a theme element: flower petals, seashells, chocolate candies, colored glass stones, confetti or autumn leaves.