A QR code seating chart guests can use on their phone
The escort card table is where every reception queues. Eighty guests arrive in ten minutes, everyone wants the same small table, and the one card that fell under a tablecloth belongs to your grandmother. A QR code by the door does the same job without the queue: guests scan it, type their name, and their phone tells them where they are sitting.
How guests find their seat
A guest points their camera at the code and a page opens with your event's name at the top and one box: type your name. Two letters are enough to start. Each result shows the table beside the name, so a guest with a common first name can pick themselves out. Tapping it shows their table in type big enough to read at arm's length, their seat number if you choose to give it, and a map of the room zoomed in on their table. There is no app to install and no account to make.
Choose how much it shows
Three choices, all yours. Seat numbers can be left off, so guests see only their table, if people are choosing their own chairs. The map of the room can be switched off too. Other guests are hidden by default: a guest sees their own name and nobody else's. Turn that on and the map shows who is sitting at each table, which suits a party of friends better than a wedding with a guest list you would rather not hand round. Whatever you hide is never sent to the phone, so it cannot be read out of the page either.
Where to put the code
One sign at the entrance, at eye level and well lit, does most of the work. A phone reads a code from about ten times its width, so a code 2 in (5 cm) across is fine on a table card, and one for people to scan from the back of a small queue wants to be 6 to 8 in (15 to 20 cm). Put the same code on the back of the order of service or the invitation, so guests can find their table before they arrive. Print the web address under it for anyone whose camera will not cooperate, and scan the finished sign with two different phones before the day.
Moving someone after the cards are printed
Printed escort cards are final the moment they come back from the printer, and a cancellation the day before means a gap at one table and a reprint for another. A QR code seating chart does not have that problem. The code points to your chart as it is now, not as it was when you printed it, so moving someone in the planner moves them for every guest who scans the code afterwards. The same printed code works right up to the moment people sit down.
Keep a paper list at the door as well
Somebody's phone will be flat, and some guests would simply rather be told. Keep one printed guest list at the entrance, sorted by surname, with a table number beside each name. It covers everybody the code does not, and it gives whoever is greeting people something to check. The planner prints one for you from the same chart the code reads, so the two always match.