Place cards are a seemingly minor detail of entertaining but, in fact, they can help to make or break your gathering. When guests are left to choose their own seats, several things can occur. First, there will be an uncomfortable period when your guests shuffle about looking for a place to sit. Second, guests will most likely sit with people they are comfortable being around. Then, any guests who don't know your other attendees will feel left out, and the rest of your group is denied the opportunity to mingle.
Also, if you'd like to keep the conversation lively, you can use place cards strategically. Place your more talkative guests around the table so that their good humor can rub off on the quieter ones.
For me, place cards serve another purpose when I am a guest. I have a horrendous memory for names or faces. I wish everyone went around with their name tattooed on his or her forehead. Unfortunately, that wouldn't go over too well, so I'm always in the awkward position of repeating the name of someone I just met 20 times over in my head, only to have it escape five minutes later. Place cards offer me a chance to take a cheating peek to remember the name of my dinner companions. We should give our guests the opportunity to do the same.
The most common form of place card is the type we see at large, formal weddings - the little cardboard tents that have guests' names and table assignments on them. You can purchase the formal kind either online, at a print shop, or at an engravers, and either handwrite the name yourself, or pay a calligrapher or engraver to do it for you. But placecards can also be used successfully at more casual gatherings and with a lot more creativity.
Here are some ideas for personalizing your own place cards:
- To personalize traditional cards, use rubber stamps to add a festive or seasonal touch to the corners or edges. There are many rubber stamp kits now available in craft stores.
- Purchase miniature picture frames to hold the place card. Then your guests have a favor to take home from your party.
- Even better, place a picture of each of your guests into the frames.
- If you plan on giving your guests a party favor, you can use a pretty ribbon to attach a card with their name onto the favor and place it at the appropriate seat.
- A seasonal plant in a miniature terra cotta pot can be used as both a placecard and a favor. Write the guest's name in a decorative marker on the pot. You can decorate it with sewing trim or ribbon with a hot glue gun.
- A single fresh flower with a card attached with a ribbon can be placed on each guest's plate.
- My friend Ruth told me that she once attended a party where the hostess used little mirrors as placecards by writing the guests' names on them in lipstick.
- Use a home publishing program to create place cards on your computer. There's a wide variety of clip art available and it takes very little time to create the cards. If you don't have a color printer, you can color them with markers or watercolors. Better yet, let your artistic children help out with the coloring.
- If you enjoy baking, how about making cookies, brownies, a miniature bread loaf or muffin for each guest and use decorator icing to write the names? If your calligraphy skills with icing aren't great, you can always use pretty labels on the plastic wrap.
- Do you enjoy making candy? If so, make giant chocolate lollipops for your guests and write names with either colored chocolate or decorator icing.
- A beautiful apple or pear can make an attractive place card with a decorative ribbon tied on the stem or around the fruit. Write the names on the ribbon.
