The Five Love Languages Birthday Party (Place Cards)

I think I love place card holders more than I love place cards! So you can only imagine that when I plan weddings, I go pretty insane with this little tidbit that adds elegance and class to any event. But place cards are not just for weddings. They can be used for showers, receptions, kids events, meetings, formal affair, casual affairs, and yes, of course, birthday parties.

Place cards serve several functions. Some of them include:

• Helping to keep the event organized
• Encouraging guests to meet new people while at the event
• Incorporating/Magnifying the theme
• Introducing people with like interest
• Making guest feel special with a personalized touch (everyone likes to see their own name in lights, LOL)
• Eliminate empty seats and gaps in the seating plan

Place cards can be pre-printed at a variety of places including Hallmark, Paper Affair, and various vendors online. However, you can also print them at home very easily on your home printer. You can add photos, colors, or motifs to make them as personal or generic as you wish. You can go very formal and have them engraved or you can hand write them on card stock from your local office supply store.

One of the hang ups with making place cards is that people don't always RSVP, and it can get very costly to have place cards printed for people who don't show to the event. This can be extremely annoying! So if you are having a gathering and don't anticipate that people will RSVP or don't have time to ensure that people do, skip the place cards. This tip has saved me a lot of headache.

However, you choose to create place cards for your event, I am sure guests will feel the love in the time and effort you took to make sure they had a place at the table.

With that being said, I have shared the place cards for the Five Love Languages party I am planning this week. Enjoy!

1. I purchased a pack of blank card stock from the store, downloaded the template from the manufacturers website, and my printer kept spitting my labels out incorrectly. This was so frustrating.



2. I adjusted the template as much as possible, even designed my own by pulling out my ruler and putting the specs into Microsoft Word, NO LUCK! I printed out my template a couple of times on regular paper, held it against the labels, and it was correctly placed. However, on the actual labels, it was all wrong.



3. So I figured since the regular paper worked, I could use some pretty purple paper that I got on sale years ago and had never used. It was a good way to incorporate the color story and it would allow each place card to be one-of-a-kind.



4. I printed them on the purple paper and cut them up into smaller, more manageable pieces.



5. I them made each of them into their own scwiggly design and glued them to the place cards. Therefore, I did not waste the ones that printed incorrectly! :-)



6. I let them dry over night, then the next day, placed cute little violet jewels in the center of each. Ta Da!! They are beautiful!!

(For links to all of the other post about this Five Love Languages event, click on the main blog post here.)