Seating chart vs escort cards

Oh, reason for the assigned seats: we are having long kings tables, and breaking those up so people know when one part of the table ends and another begins is impossible. Also, divorced family drama means I can control it and put my parents on opposite sides of the space

We are going to assign tables and my venue will do a seating chart/sign for us (LOVE my venue). It will be available for viewing for a good two hours before the wedding, but I still may do escort cards. We'll see.

Awesome, thanks for all of this everyone!!! If you're doing escort cards, how do you let the guests know what seat they're assigned to? We have a few meal options so we need everyone in their assigned seats to receive the proper meals. I've read a few that have color coded stickers on them. Do guests typically know to set out their escort cards on the table after it's been retrieved? Or, do you number the seats per table and place a coded sticker on the seat numbers? Or, do you have a second tented card at every seat with coding and each guests names?

We're doing escort cards because we are having meal choices (chicken, beef, vegetarian), and the venue requires that we indicate the meal choice of each guest.

I really wanted to do a chart initially