Weddingbee Blog

Once we had made the decision to forgo traditional favours and donate to a charity instead, the question arose: how would we let guests know this? I didn’t want to clutter the tables with loads of different pieces of information—there’s already going to be enough on each one, what with cutlery, dinner-sets, glassware, centrepieces, and table numbers/menus taking up space!

Then, it hit me: what if I incorporated the message into something else that would already be on each table? I’ve been trying to avoid using traditional folded name-tags on our wedding tables, only because I’ve seen them at every wedding I’ve ever been to—and I’ve been searching for alternatives ever since. Remember when I’d decided to do scripted doily place cards to sit over the plates at the table? That didn’t work out, since our venue doesn’t have plates set up on the tables until food is served. Instead, I thought back to how the tables would look on the day, as you can see in this {slightly blurry} picture I took during a recent visit.

If you squint, you can see the favours for this particular wedding—each guest had a boxed candle and a jar of green rock candies.

But what was more important to me was what it was placed on: the plain ivory napkin. Now I had a ‘back-drop’ for our place cards to sit flush with! A few hours in Microsoft Publisher later (yes, I am that technologically challenged) and I had our place-cards ready to go.

I designed these to be slightly smaller than a standard rectangular napkin (as they were folded at Curzon Hall)—they fit three to a standard landscaped A4 piece of paper. To keep things consistent, the fonts are the same ones used in our invitation suite. (I’ll also be using them when I create our table menus and our ceremony programs.) These are only trial runs on standard paper, but I’ve purchased a thicker, linen looking ivory cardstock to print out the trial runs. Since our RSVPs are only just starting to trickle in, I can’t complete this project yet: I simply added pages to my Publisher document and will create a place card for each guest as they respond with a YES, to save myself the hassle of having to do it later.

The text reads: ‘In lieu of a traditional wedding favour, we have made a donation on your behalf to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. We thank you so much for your support and hope that you will join us in wearing your pin for the rest of the evening.’

What’s this pin I’m speaking of? Well, in the gap left between text boxes on our place-card sheets, I’ll be attaching a Breast Cancer Foundation pin to each guest. They’re called ‘Pink Ribbons’—and it’s our little show of appreciation. Hopefully the text and the pin combined will make things clear to our guests.

Ribbon Pin: available for purchase via the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

I’m really happy with how they turned out—they’re almost exactly as I was envisioning!

Are your place cards going to be a little unique?