Table stationary

Welcome to hitched.

Sorry, but I think you are thinking FAR too much into the menus!!! There are more important things that guests will remember & that make a great wedding, rather than worrying if there are 3 menus, 10 menus, folded, flat etc. It will get glanced at, then put to the side!

Our venue provided 3-4 menus per table of 10. This was adequate. They were sitting flat on the table, but why not have them propped against the centrepiece of glasswear if you dont want them on the table. Or as you said, folded then they stand up themselves. I think a frame is a waste of money & will take up too much space on the table.

As for vegetarian menus, if majority of the guests were vegetarian, I'd have a veggie menu on display. If, however, only a few are veggie, I'd just provide the regular menu & not display the veggie one at all. The vegetarians can always ask the waiter as to whats in the dish if required.

Are you printing the seating chart in the US or UK? Most libraries have photocopiers/printers you can use, as do internet cafes/stationers that could blow up the seating plan.

Have you checked that the venue dont already supply menus & table plans? Mine did.

Have you checked if the venue have a stand or some sort of way to display the seating plan? You could always print out the list on 2x A4 sheets, roll in a tubular, cardboard tube to transport to the UK. Once here, go to a poundland/asda/tesco & buy 2x frames to put the seating plan in.These could then sit on either a table at the door way or a display stand if the venue provide it. Frames from any of the above stores could be as little as US$1.50 each!

Just remember that both the seating plan & menus will prob only be looked at for 30seconds by guests!

We had:

A menu tag for each guest, attached to their name tag, bound by their favour and tucked into their napkin.

So we personalised each tag, depending on the combination of meatie/veggie starter/main (we picked the apparently troublesome fish then lamb for meaties, so several chose veggie replacements).

Our table plan was A5 cards with the table names/people names on them, tied with ribbon to a heart memo holder:

If you'd like menus for each of your guests, why not combine the menu with the place card which I have done a few times. This looks lovely. You can do a DL size (9.5x21cm) and then have the guests name at the top and the menu underneath. Would work lovely.

Nat

First of all - do as already suggested and check they are not provided for you by the venue.

If they aren't, I don't think you are thinking too much about it - you should provide guests information about what they'll be served and you need to think about how you want to do that. But don't WORRY about it - people won't really mind at the end of the day if its one or ten per table. Just relax and try and enjoy the planning process, at least a bit!

We decided to print a copy of the menu on the reverse of the table number sign. Ours is a menu with a pre-ordered choice (one veg one meat) so people will know the menu beforehand any - we had to ask them what they wanted on the invites. So it just appears like

Starter OR Starter

Main OR Main

Dessert

This could save you a lot of paper and hassle - one per table, and they don't need to be bigger than A4.

The easiest way to get something printed bigger than A4 is to take an electronic copy (on a memory stick) to a print shop. Depending on the paper and the finish you can get an A1 poster printed for as little as £10. Another option is an online print shop, those sites where you get photos printed up. There you are basically just getting a poster printed - doing it online will allow you to shop around and get the best finish for the best price and get it shipped to the UK.

Just relax and enjoy the process - and good luck!!

Thanks so much for your advice everyone! The venue don't provide these things, plus I want them to match my invitations so prefer to do them myself anyway. I like the idea of combining menus with either place settings or table numbers, definitely something to think about. Most american weddings have one menu per place setting, I'm still just worried about where they all go when people unfold their napkins. I would love to have a single rose or rose bud on each setting, but it gets very expensive and I totally agree that no-one will even notice except me.

So funny that I only had 6 months to plan this and I still have time to worry about stupid stuff like this - god knows what I would have been like with 18 months! :-)