Incorporating decorated cookies and seating cards can be a unique way to help guests find their seats! I’ve had a lot of inquiries lately about place/escort card cookies so I thought I’d do an article with some ideas and tips for using them as part of your event.
1. A good starting point to find inspiration for the cookie design is to start with the paper goods being used in the event (invitation, programs, menu cards, etc…). It is often not hard to find an element to pull onto the cookie whether it’s hand-painted flowers to mimic letterpress or lace, a monogram, or simple stripes. The cookies below used a three flower design which was prominent on all pieces of their paper suite. We did two different cookies alternating alphabetically. The ovals featured the flowers stenciled on while the flowers on the rectangles were hand-piped.
2. Another good place to look for inspiration is the overall theme, attire, and colors of the event. A rustic garden wedding, a seaside affair, or a black-tie event featuring flowers & decor in shades of white…each of these events evoke different very different images and creating a design to match can really help to tie everything together.
3. Welcoming guests during the cocktail hour with seating card cookies can be a nice prelude of what’s to come if you are featuring a dessert table or candy buffet as part of the reception.
4. For the cookies pictured below the bride wanted to keep the wedding intimate feeling and decided to only use first names. This can work well if you are having a small affair or are organizing the cookies by table number and are using a second form of seating chart so guests know which group to look in for their cookies.
5. If you really want to have your seating cards match your paper goods then another packaging option is to attach small cookies to beautiful matching cards from your stationer. All lined up on a table they make an eye-catching display.
6. It’s traditional to assign tables with seating (escort) cards by couple. If you want to go the traditional route you can attach cards to cookies by their ribbons allowing you to use any size cookie. With the cookies pictured below we did a heart for single guests and an identical but larger heart cookie for couples.
7. Attaching seating cards to large or elaborate cookies can be one way give your guests a more extravagant favor than you may have been able to if you gave each guest their own favor. Because you can now give one favor per couple you will be able to cut down on the number of favors needed. This works well for something like the tiered cake cookie below since its size ensures that there is enough cookie to be shared by two people.
Expert Advice from Jennifer Burkhart
