So much about preparing for your wedding can feel serious. But the wedding breakfast or reception is where the fun begins. Of course, you want to get it right, but it’s here that even the most formal of affairs can consider getting quirky. And there are so many ways to make yours fun, original and yet still totally beautiful. Your wedding place name settings are a tiny, tiny detail. But can be a great place to start.

Five Wedding Place Name Setting Ideas

Mini pot plants or living bulbs

This is one of the cutest ideas we’ve seen for wedding place settings. Acting as a favour and a place setting in one, pot plants and bulbs symbolise life and future growth. And your guests will have a beautiful gift that will grow and bloom in synch with your relationship. Potted plants can be on the expensive side, especially if you select ceramic pots to match the rest of your table. But flowering bulbs can simply be tied with ribbon and a name tag. If your guests take them home and plant them, they will come back year after year, reminding all your loved ones of your special day. 

Tiles or coasters

Tiles, slates and coasters can be a fairly cost-effective way to create impactful and stylish wedding place settings. If you’re happy using mismatched pieces, you can pick up small slices of slate fairly cheaply. Hand-written in chalk, those are your place settings dealt with. If you have more of a budget, personalised tiles and coasters can make a great place setting-wedding favour combo. Depending on your choice of image and/or text the effect can be classy, fun, or a combination of the two!

Swizzels Love Hearts

Swizzels personalised giant Love Hearts can be used for all sorts of things. They were created mainly with wedding place settings in mind, and bring a lovely sense of fun to the occasion. Almost everyone has a Love Hearts memory. Whether giggling at the messages with your BFF, making ‘tattoo stamps’ by licking the messages and pressing them to the skin, or boys squeamishly accepting them off girls, because well, they were girls and they were hearts, but they were also sweets. And that brings a wonderful sense of nostalgia to your special day.

Pine cones and dried flowers

If you’re working on a budget and live somewhere you can easily go collecting, pine cones can be a lovely way to bring a touch of nature to your table dressings. Gather them up. Leave them to dry. Write or print out your guest’s names on high quality card. Job done. While this can work at any time of year, it’s particularly apt for an autumn or winter wedding. Seasonal alternatives would be small bunches of dried flowers. Statice, dried poppy heads and corn stalks work beautifully well. If you’ve got the time and have a good hand for calligraphy, you could even write your guest’s names on large dried leaves.

Personalised drinking glasses

This is a more expensive option. But if you’ve got the budget and want to combine your favours with your place settings, then a personalised drinking glass or teacup – depending on the style of your wedding – can look wonderful. And bring some humour to the event. If you’re having a fairly intimate wedding, then you could even have some fun and select drinking vessels to match your guest’s favourite tipple. A shot glass for your sister, a beaker for your flower girls, a sherry glass for Granny and a schooner for Uncle Bill!

If you have a little imagination, your options for wedding place settings are more or less limitless. Make cork boats, personalised spoons, Christmas tree ornaments, badges or name stamp sweetie bags to go with  your candy buffet. Your wedding will be wonderful whatever ideas you come up with. But we hope that that we’ve been able to inspire you just a little!