Weddingbee Blog

When I last talked about what I was going to do for escort cards, I showed you the idea I had to modify the origami flowers into escort flowers. Once I had completed that mockup I knew that was what I wanted to do, and began the process of folding enough petals to make one flower per guest. Since each flower requires 5 petals and we were estimating 160 guests, we folded 800 petals! And when I say ’we’, I really mean: my mom. Here’s a quick look at the final product, first!

(this photo copyright of Amy Deputy Photography)

My mom is awesome. She folded nearly all of the 800 petals needed to make the escort flowers. I sent her 3 x 3 inch square sheets of paper and she mailed me back rows and rows of folded petals, which she said was a nice mindless activity she could do while watching TV or a movie:

(About 50 petals stacked one inside another)

I then took each petal and cut the bottom point off so that the flower wouldn’t have a pointy bottom but instead could sit flat on the table.

(I used this circle punch for easy repetition and sizing of the cut off tip, always aligning the point on the center circle of the punch)

Repeat times a million (or 800), and get lots of those little cut off end tips that you save for no apparent reason.

(One petal with the point cut off, and one petal glued together to show how the bottom is now flat instead of pointy, along with a bag full of the little pointy ends)

At some point I thought I would be able to repurpose those tips into confetti or something useful, but alas they are still sitting in my big box o’ wedding stuff. They just seem like they could be useful! Anyway… after gluing all the petals together, I had a box that looked like this:

(Probably about half the petals - I was already in the midst of gluing flowers when I thought to take a photo)

Once all the petals were glued together, I started grouping them in fives and gluing them into the complete flower form. In the end, I made 140 flowers for our 136 guests. Then we had to glue on the leaves to make them into actual escort flowers, and not just pretty flowers with the bottom hacked off. I printed the leaves onto yellow cardstock with the names on one leaf and the table number on another. On the back of the cardstock in a yellow just darker than the paper, I printed an outline for the leaf so I could cut it out without messing up the front side with a line.

(Ready to assemble, with the leaves organized in Ziploc bags by table number. Because my mom is smart like that!)

Again, my mom pretty much cut out most of the leaves as well as helped me glue a bunch of them onto the flowers. Love you Mom Guinea Pig! (Also I swear, I did stuff too!) We used a hot glue gun and stuck the two leaves overlapping, over the hole in the bottom of the flower.

Once we had each flower made, we sorted them into paper bags with the appropriate letter for the person’s last name, since these aren’t exactly stackable like flat cards.

(Six is checking to make sure we alphabetized everyone properly)

And that was it for prep! At the venue, the flowers were placed alphabetically on a circular table in the center of the bar room/cocktail area, and everyone seemed to love them - Mr. Guinea Pig’s aunts even wore them as hair flowers for most of the night!

(photo by friend DB of the arrangement at the reception)

(Mr. GP’s aunts modeling the lovely flower! This photo copyright of Amy Deputy Photography)

Are you doing anything atypical for escort cards? Did anyone else have to look up the difference between escort cards and place cards? Are you hoping guests will use your escort/place cards as embellishments for their outfit?