How do we know who eats what? (catering/name things)

You could make a wedding website and have them RSVP everyone in the party and put their meal selection there.

We're having a plated dinner as well, so I used business cards from VP to make an insert that will go with the response cards in our invites. They say:

Please initial beside each guest's entree selection

____ Tri Tip _____ Chicken

____ Vegetarian _____ Child's meal

Please return this insert with your response card

I'm hoping that this way I will know who wants what exactly and can place a different colored rhinestone on their escort card. If they just put a check (ex: 1 tri tip, 1 chicken) then 1 guest will get the tri tip and 1 will get the chicken... and they'll have to switch if it's incorrect.

Although I suppose I could call them and ask, but I gave them the opportunity, and it's not my fault if they don't fill it out correctly.

I am a vegetarian. The staff always seems to know what table I am at. I assume that you make your seating arrangement, mark who gets what and then send it to the caterer.

When I was assisting a friend plan her wedding, she had assigned tables and seats. We prepared a spreadsheet with all the guests and their choices. We provided that to the caterer.

You poor thing. In an effort to avoid this, my mom and I decided to give everyone the same thing... it's a combination plate with 12 oz. of prime rib and a boneless chicken breast (chicken parmesan preparation).

I know who all the vegetarians on my side are; FH will have to see if his family knows of any on that side. I will be calling the vegetarians and letting them know what the meal is so they can tell me if they really want the vegetarian option, or if they would prefer the beef and chicken (my aunt is a selective vegetarian).

PS...don't rely on the wedding website. Mine was a lot less successful than I thought it would be. It has been looked at 6 times since save the dates went out containing the URL.

I don't know if I want to assign seats or just tables, but I can't figure out seating charts until I know who's coming anyway. and I'm not sure if RSVPs are even going to be coming to us or my mom (since the wedding's near our families, and we're 300 miles away..) Lynzey and KristnB, thanks, initials are a good idea!

On the escort cards I'm outing different accent colors....silver, slate and burgundy. Something to note to the servers. Easy.

Buffee, that's a great idea.

Weddingwire's wedding websites have an option to RSVP each guest in the household and meal option, you just have to add the RSVP page on this site and add the guest in the "guestlist" tab under "my wedding" tab.

I also put please initial your plate of choice on the RSVP card. Then for the escort cards, I bought cute flowers in 4 different colors (one for each meal chosen) at Michaels that will stick on the escort card.

Next to each meal choice, we put a line:

___Filet Mignon Name(s)_______________

___Chicken Name(s)_______________

Our escort cards will have different color backing designating each type of meal.

Our venue coordinator called to say the staff really appreciated how easy we were making it for them to get each person's correct meal to them.

We printed up menus (using resume paper in cardstock weight) and Word doc. In the header for each menu, we typed the person's name. As each person sent in their RSVP card with meal selection, we attached a corresponding ribbon to the menu. (lt blue was beef, red was chicken, purple for vegetarian, and dark blue meant a special order)

Menus served as both table cards and meal indicators. Very easy and cheap to make.

We thought about just assigning tables using color coding on Escort cards - which works great too as long as whatever is being used to identify the meal can be easily seen by the servers. (Several jokes were made about people who had marked the cards on the inside or on the back)