Table Numbers

The decor at this year's Whitney Museum of American Art gala in New York emphasized materials familiar to artists, such as paintbrushes and sketch pads. Playful centerpieces included table numbers imprinted on silver paint cans.

In the dining room, David Stark Design hung 1,750 Edison lightbulbs from the ceiling. They formed numerals that helped guests find their seats among the sea of 417 tables.

For a wedding produced by AaB Creates at the Altman Building in 2012, the table numbers popped out of the pages of open books. The numbers were carved out of the books' pages using an X-Acto knife.

Large graphic table numbers provided the bulk of the decor during the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's National Design Awards gala in 2011.

Designer David Stark used fluorescent tape provided by 3M to create much of the decor for the National Design Awards gala in 2011. At some of the tables, rolls of the colorful tape added a decorative element to platforms displaying large-scale table numbers.

Instead of going in numerical order at the October 2011 dinner for Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art's anniversary, each table number represented an important year in the museum's 75-year history.

Plexiglas table number displays added a reflective element to the tables at a local college prep school's 75th anniversary gala, held in 2010 at the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa in Hollywood, Florida.

To fit in with the "Passport to the World" theme at the Children's Place Association's Once Upon a Time gala in Chicago in 2009, table numbers were printed on faux passports.

In keeping with the murderous focus of the play, table numbers were written on realistic-looking plastic daggers.

The Giselle gala at the Harris Theater this year boasted all-white decor with large, transparent cubes that were suspended from the ceiling in the dining area. Ferns and white freesia dotted the table tops.

Escort cards on custom drink stirrers were placed in glasses of white peach sangria at a summer wedding produced by Camp Hill, Pennsylvania-based catering and events company the JDK Group.