The BEST Wedding Escort Cards

Weddings are a wonderful celebration of love - of course between the couple, but also with the family and friends you get to share the day with.

For our wedding we wanted a meaningful and fun way to show our guests how important they were in our lives and how thankful we were for the roles they had played in helping shape us into the people we are today. We also wanted a wedding favor that would be something our guests would enjoy and not just throw away as soon as they got home.

Putting those two thoughts together, I came up with the idea to have pictures of us (the bride and groom) with all of our wedding guests to use as escort cards as well as our wedding favor. I wasn't sure if we would be able to pull it off since it would require finding pictures with everyone coming to our wedding, but with the help of our moms and old photo albums on Facebook we were able to find a picture for everyone! These were the best wedding escort cards I've ever seen and our photo escort cards were an even bigger hit than we expected them to be. They were an element of our wedding that guests continued to talk about for months after and gave them something special to take home as well.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read the full disclosure here.

How we were able to do the Best Wedding Escort Cards

Finding photos of us with all of our guests wasn't the easiest task, but it actually turned out to be a lot of fun since it meant going through old pictures and photo albums. We tried finding the oldest photos we could or ones of significant memories with the guest as a reminder of how important they have been in our lives. There were a number of reasons we were able to make the photo cards work so here are some of the things that allowed us to be able to pull this off.

1) We had a small wedding

We had a pretty small wedding with only 100 guests invited and about 70 who actually made it. This helped a lot with making it possible to find photos with everyone since the number of pictures we were looking for wasn't huge. Plus it was really only our closest friends and family who were coming which made it a lot more likley we had pictures with them. If you have a wedding with over 200 guests, doing photo escort cards might be a lot harder and will definitely be more time consuming.

2) We had lots of hold family photos

Luckily between our two families we had plenty of old family photos with cousins and aunts and uncles. Most of those were printed in photo albums so for a lot of them we ended up taking a picture with our phone of the original photo so we could then print it in the right size. As long as the lighting is good and you don't have any weird shadows, we found that a photo of a photo actually works fine and doesn't drastically alter the quality.

3) We used group pictures

While we tried to find individual photos with all of our guests there were many people we only had group photos with, so there were times we just had to use those. It ended up being fun, though, because it meant there were a number of guests that made appearances in several photos. Some of them saw themselves and picked up the photo only to realize it was actually another friend's escort card, and then they could pass it along to that person and keep searching for theirs. It brought up a lot of fun conversations of, "Oh, remember this time?!" and "I totally we forgot we did that!" and turned out to be a fun bonding moment with friends and family.

4) We planned ahead to get some pictures

We started compiling photos with our friends and family pretty early on in our engagement so we knew quickly who we didn't have pictures with. This meant that if we saw those people in the months leading up to our wedding we knew we needed to grab a photo with them to have for their card. This was mostly friends we haven't known as long or who had married into the friend group.

The most fun picture we got was one of my husband's friends from college got married several months before our wedding and we knew we didn't have a picture with his wife, so we planned ahead and while on the dance floor at their wedding grabbed a quick, blurry selfie with both of us and the bride and groom! It's not the best quality photo but was a lot of fun and they both enjoyed it a lot.

5) Plus 1's didn't get their own photo

We didn't have very many plus 1's at our wedding who we didn't know, but I had a couple cousins bringing a significant other I had never met before. For the people we didn't have pictures with and knew we wouldn't see before our wedding we just added their name to the back of the photo card of their date. My husband's parents also invited a couple they have been friends with for years who my husband didn't have any pictures with, so we ended up using an old photo of his parents and the couple together as their photo card. That worked fine since it was a nice memory for the four of them and still allowed them to be included in what we were doing even though they didn't know us as well.

How we made the Photo Escort Cards

Here are the steps we used to make the photo escort cards.

1) Made a shared photo album on our phones

When we were engaged my (now) husband and I made a shared photo album in our phones to add pictures of us with our guests as we found them. We would spend a little bit of time here and there going through old photos and adding any we liked to the album. For a number of family members we also asked our moms to look through old photo albums they had to see if they could find who we were looking for. Once it came time to print out pictures we could then go back through our shared phone album and decide which one we chose for each guest to print out.

2) Printed the Photos in 4x6"

We printed out all of the photos as 4x6 size since that was the size for the frames we ordered. We also knew that for the photos that were a picture of a picture that was still small enough for the quality not to be terrible like it might be if we blew it up bigger. I used CVS printshop to print all of the photos since that was the closest pick up place to where I was living. I also waited until they were having good sales (they happen pretty regularly and often leading up to holidays) so I could get 40-60% off of the prints. This ended up saving us lots of money since we had so many photos to print out.

3) Ordered Cardstock Frames

We ordered these Blank White Cardstock Frames off of Amazon to put the pictures in and they worked great. They are sturdy and easy to use and because they were white we could easily write on the backs of them. They come in a pack of 50 so we ordered two.

4) Wrote out guest's names

Once we had each photo in a frame we then wrote out the guest's name and table number on the back. We also added little notes to some of the photos but didn't do this for every card.

5) Printed a sign with instructions

The last step for the photo escort cards was to print out instructions to have at the reception so people knew what to do with their photos. I created a sheet that had the directions to "Find your photo, find your seat" as well as a little thank you note to guests that I printed it out and placed it in a decorative frame on the table with the pictures. You can find the SIGN here on my Etsy page if you are interested in using the same one.

Why These Were the Best Escort Cards

1) Showed guests how important they are to us

One of the reasons I wanted to do the photo escort cards was to find a way to ackowledge our guests and the major roles they have played in our lives. By finding old memories with our friends and family we were able to remind them how much we value our relationships with them and share a moment of joy or significance from our lives together.

2) Sparked conversations

These photos were such a fun way to get guests talking with each other and sharing wonderful memories. For the tables where everyone knew each other already some pictures provided opportunities to remenise on events they had been at together, or enjoy the group photos where several of them appeared in it. For tables of strangers it provided an easy ice breaker for the group to get to know each other, share the memory from the photo they received, and explain their connection to the bride and groom. It was also such a joy for us to see people across the room sharing their photos with each other, enjoying fond memories, and laughing about stories from years gone by.

3) Gave guests something meaningful to take home

Like I mentioned earlier, I wanted to give our guests a favor that would be meaningful and not just a beer koozie with our names on it they would inevitably throw away as soon as they got home. Since our wedding we've seen a number of these photos cards in the homes of our friends and family on bookshelves, fridges, and placed with other photos. We were so happy we gave our guests something that was special and personal to them instead of a cliche item they didn't care about.

4) It was something our guests talked about for months after

These photo cards were one of the things from our wedding that guests continued to talk about for months afterwards. When we saw friends and family again after our wedding the comments we got the most were how beautiful the setting was, what a big hit the ice cream bar had been, and how much people enjoyed the photo cards. People mentioned how unique and fun it was, what a special surprise it had been, and how much they enjoyed the conversations that it led to. Even our wedding coordinator who has been in the business for years said she had never seen these before and thought it was so cool she was going to suggest it to others in the future!

Final Thoughts

If you are looking for a fun and meaningful way to include your guests in part of your wedding day then I really recommend doing photo escort cards. They take a little more time than traditional cards, but they are so much more special. You will have fun looking through old photos to find the right one and your guests will be so surpirsed and appreciative of a sentimental favor they can take home. Plus the conversasations and memories shared are such a wonderful way to connect guests during the reception.

I hope you use this guide to create photo escort cards for your wedding and that they turn out to be as big of a hit as they were at our wedding! If you do, please come tell me about it in the comments below!