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Tackling Seating Charts By Melissa J Wantuck  |
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 Assigning seats at your wedding reception is a simple way to provide your guests with one less worry: where will they sit? But it can be a headache to decide who’s going to sit where. Here’s our guide to helping you arrange your seating quickly and efficiently:
Don’t Procrastinate
If you haven’t already printed your invitations, set your RSVP date at least two weeks before the wedding. This gives you time to track done negligent responders and start your seating chart well in advance of the night before. Your goal should be to have the seating chart finished the week before the wedding at the latest. That final week is the busiest and once you’ve gone through the seating chart process, you’ll be relieved this headache is out of the way.
Map It Out
Make a chart. Take a piece of paper and draw out the tables, or your reception site may provide a map of their tables for you. Have a few copies of these on hand and a final one when you’ve decided on placement of everyone.
Know how many seats are at each table and stick to that number. The reception site will want them filled properly, especially is space and table arrangement is an issue. If a few tables are low on numbers, there may not be room for the extra table that results.
Assign numbers to each table, or use the numbers the reception site gives, and as you group guests, assign them to a specific table. Keep in mind that parents and grandparents should sit the closest to the bride and groom. Also, if only the wedding party will be at the head table, seat guests and family of the wedding party as close to the head table as you can so they can be near each other.
Relations
A simple way to start grouping people is to seat relatives at the same tables. For example, seat aunts and uncles at one table and cousins at another, putting the bride’s family on one side of the room and the groom’s family on the other side. For younger families, group a couple of them together at each table. This way parents will be able to help their children during the meal and there won’t be as much chaos if a table of young children was left unattended by adults.
Acquaintances
After family has been seated, group neighbors, coworkers, and friends at each of their own tables. If these numbers are only a couple or few of each, group them together by interest. This part requires both the bride and groom working together. One may not be acquainted with the guests of the other. By working together, the bride and groom can recommend who would sit best with various guests. Some acquaintances might be family friends, so place them at tables of the family members they know.
Taboo Tables
Avoid singles tables, or an “outcast” table. These can be obvious and it’s better to attempt to mix people with similar interests rather than who’s left out from the group or a number of guests who are coming date-less.
If there are family feuds, don’t seat the feuding individuals together. Even if you’re attempting to heal wounds, you might end up with something unpleasant in the middle of your reception. Keeping distance between the feuding individuals is better on a day that should celebrate your marriage and not be about forced peace talks.
Create a Master List
Once you’ve arranged all of your guests at the tables create a master list, alphabetical by guest’s last names and then list the name of their table after their name. Printing out the list will ensure readability or for a classical look, have it written in calligraphy by a professional calligrapher. Framing the list and placing it on an easel is one formal way to present it. Pasting it on a folded board is another, or create a way that fits with your theme.
Get Creative
Use a theme of your choice, instead of using table numbers, to name your tables. It should be something that relates to the couple, like sites you’ll see on your honeymoon, names of mountains you’ve hiked, names of lakes you’ve fished in, different flowers, etc. Your theme should represent who you are and your shared interests.
Table Identification
If you’re skipping table numbering and going with a naming theme, be sure to have a marker on each table that clearly identifies its name. The name could be printed and placed inside a picture frame, or place the name on a firm surface like cardboard and set it in a place card holder.
Be sure to let your reception site coordinator know what table names you’re using. Share a copy of your seating chart with them so they know the placement of the tables so they aren’t accidentally moved elsewhere.
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