It’s Spring again, and that means wedding napkin season has arrived. Or, if you’re not us, you might just know it as wedding season. Napkins are our bread and butter, and they’re still the go-to classic for everything we do. Since it’s the season, we thought it’d be the perfect time to share an updated wedding napkin guide. Read on to learn more!
Wedding Napkin Basics
Essentially, wedding napkins are a way for you to express your wedding theme and sense of style. It’s no secret that wedding themes have blown up in importance in recent years, and the theme and color story you select says a lot about your taste and the kind of wedding you want (no pressure!). That’s where wedding napkins come in. They are an affordable way to add a custom touch to your event. Details matter!
Types of Wedding Napkin
In ascending size order, we offer cocktail, luncheon and dinner napkins, in addition to guest towels for your bathroom. Depending on the time of day and your occasion, we recommend cocktail napkins, and then luncheon or dinner napkins, though it can also come down to personal size preference.
Cocktail Napkins
Of all our wedding napkin offerings, cocktail napkins are our bread and butter. They’re typically about 5 inches square, and are the perfect size to pair with a signature cocktail or an aperitif for your wedding. Cocktail napkins from For Your Party are especially versatile because they come in a wide variety of styles and colors to match any event—classic, shimmer, and woven, to name just a few. There’s nothing you can’t do with them, and we recommend them as key accessories for any wedding reception, night or day.
Luncheon Napkins
If you’re serving bigger bites or smaller plates, our Luncheon Napkins are a great option. Mostly 6.5 inches square, luncheon napkins give you the coverage for a bigger meal, but in a relatively compact package. Luncheon napkins also come in a triangular scalloped shape, for a retro twist that’s nothing but fun. The larger print area gives you more room to work your creative touch, so show us what you can do! Like our cocktail napkins, luncheon napkins come in a variety of styles. We especially like 2 color printing, since it’s a great use of the larger print area.
Dinner Napkins
Next up, our Dinner Napkins are a statement for when you want a customizable napkin that’s sized for a full meal. Our dinner napkins measure 8 inches square, or, for our extra large size, 9.5 by 9.25 inches. While our dinner napkins don’t come in quite as many varieties as their smaller siblings, both 3 ply and linen like are represented. Dinner napkins can also be ordered folded, for a classy touch that looks great in a presentation with silverware.
Guest Hand Towels
Lastly, our Guest Hand Towels are there for your bathroom, for an extra accent on your big day. At about 4.25 x 8.5”, they’re an elegant bathroom towel shape that provides ample coverage for your guests to dry their hands. They also look great paired with our perfectly-sized trays that come in color schemes for any event! We personally recommend our linen like guest hand towels for their extra absorbency. Note that because large areas of foil printing can run when wet, we recommend smaller and thinner graphics for our guest hand towels.
Let’s Talk Paper
As far as material goes, our classic wedding napkin is our 3-ply tissue, with an embossed “skirt” along two edges. However, we also offer borderless, linen like, and luxe options. Borderless is the same fabric as our 3-ply napkins, without the embossing. They’re great if you have a larger design, or if you want to print all the way in one corner.
Our linen-like napkins use a thicker, premium fabric that’s more absorbent and feels great in the hand. They’re also borderless, and offer a premium experience for your wedding. Lastly, our luxe napkins incorporate metallic elements right in the fabric, and are great for glam events.
Time to Print!
The next big question for your wedding napkins is how to print. For foil stamping, your artwork is made into a metal die, and then stamped through a colored foil at a high temperature onto a substrate (your matches, napkins, or anything else). It’s an alchemical process, because each color of foil needs a slightly different temperature to work well, and is slightly more or less prone to filling in and bleeding (shoutout to our skilled production team!). The result is beautiful color, paired with a slight debossing effect that can be felt in art with solid patches of color, or text that’s bolder.
You can also opt for ink printing, which gives great color at a lower cost. Think of this as a really fancy version of your own printer at home, where colored inks are applied right onto a surface. It can capture tiny details in small areas better than foil stamping can. Secondly, it can use a full range of colors on one product, so it’s what we use for full color orders. Last, but not least, ink printing is a bit more colorfast, so this printing style works great for guest towels or anything that’s going to be handled with wet hands.
Lastly, embossing leaves a colorless raised impression of your artwork. Embossing is the process of using two interlocking dies to make a raised impression of artwork. No ink is used in this process, so the impression is the same color as the rest of the napkin. They have a great feel in the hand, because the embossing lends a great texture to the napkins. The result is subtle and classy—try these for a black-tie wedding or elegant corporate events.
Wedding Napkin FAQs
Our number one question is: how many wedding napkins do I need? It can be hard to gauge exactly—since they’re disposable, it’s not as simple as every guest getting one, plus a couple extra. We recommend 3-4 cocktail napkins and 1-2 dinner, luncheon, and guest towels per guest for your event, assuming it’s a wedding and reception of standard length. Of course, feel free to reach out with any other questions. We’re an email away at customerservice@foryourparty.com.
Get Creative!
Wedding napkins are a unique way to infuse your creativity into the event. We love seeing fun fact napkins, as well as napkins that include their own games. We’ve been seeing people use their wedding napkins as a space for people to write down spontaneous notes or well wishes, and adding your pets on napkins is as popular as ever. The point is to think outside the box and make your wedding a reflection of you.
Show Us How You Use Them!
Regardless of what kind of wedding napkins you choose, accessories from For Your Party are a great way to tie any event together and leave your guests wowed. Tag us on socials @foryourparty to show off how you use our wedding napkins!
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