Escort Card & Board Examples

Much like wedding cake and linen, a couple’s escort board or escort cards are just another extension of their personality and event theme. Every Kahn’s Catering wedding is required to have, at minimum, an escort card or an escort board for each guest, couple or family. The card or board communicate the same information to your guests: their name and their table assignment. For those weddings offering their guests a choice of entree, place cards are also required. Both elements help your guests feel taken care of and help ensure success for your event.

We understand that it may be easy to argue that the escort card and place card can be combined, but one would be surprised to learn how often escort cards are misplaced during cocktail hour or entirely skipped over by guests at times. This can cause several complications that can impact the overall success of seating your guests and carrying out a smooth dinner service.Because of how easy it is to misplace escort cards, we recommend that an escort board is used.

Pros and Cons of Escort Cards

Pros:

• They are more traditional and guests know exactly what they are when they see that table full of cards.
• You can double them as a favor by tying each one to a fun treat (a cookie, bottle of champagne, popcorn etc.)

Cons:

• If you are trying to double them as place cards to indicate entrée selections, you will need to tell your emcee to let the guests know to place them in front of their place settings at the table prior to the start of dinner service.
• If the writing is too fancy or the lighting is too low, guests might have trouble seeing their names.
• They can get out of order quickly if guests accidentally pick up the wrong person’s card and place it in a different spot on the table.
• If your foyer or cocktail area is tight on space, then an 6-foot table full of cards may be hard to squeeze in.

Pros and Cons of an Escort Board

Pros:

• Guests can quickly find their names under the corresponding letter of their last name.
• You do not need to alphabetize individual cards; the list is already printed in alphabetical order.
• Guests can easily look at where other friends are sitting to make sure to visit those tables and catch up with them at some point in the evening.
• The board is portable and can be moved in the middle of cocktail hour from the front entrance of the venue to the entrance of the dining room to give people two chances to find their names and table numbers.
• Typically the cost to produce a single escort board print are less than printing escort cards.

Cons:

• It cannot double as place cards or favors.

Kahn’s Catering requires that all escort boards and cards are organized alphabetically by last name.

Below are some examples of escort cards and escort boards to give you a bit of inspiration.