Wedding Seating 101

As you tackle the big questions of date, venue, and dress, a big nightmare scenario for many brides is the seating chart. We’ve all seen the dramatized movie scenes of bride with names, tables, and a huge board of the guests they know they can’t put next to each other. The last thing any wedding needs is two feuding exes at the same table making your wedding fit for a reality tv drama. This hilarious clip from Our Family Wedding (2010) is perfect example of wedding seating gone terribly, terribly wrong!!

Our goal as a planner is to help you arrange the perfect harmony of your family, his family, the singles, the couples, the close friends, and keep your loud, inappropriate uncle as far away from sweet grandma.

The Logistics

How many people do your tables seat? Rounds or banquet? Does your space offer a certain type of table arrangement or are you able to book any company for seating? Where will you be sitting? Once we establish some of the more specific details that involve coordinating with the venue we can tackle the who goes where with much more ease. Having a planner that has this information or can reach out on your behalf will eliminate a lot of back and forth that can make the process stressful.round table seating

Know Your Guests

You and your fiance should sit down and go over the who’s who of the guest list. This is a great time to learn about each other’s family, friends and funny stories. Get visual! Use pieces of paper with numbers to represent the size and seating space of each table along with brightly colored individual pieces for each guest. You can even use different colors for family, friends, co-workers, etc. so you can make sure you’re keeping like people together. Make sure you’ve included plus ones and everyone on your list–double check!

seating markers

Best advice: don’t over think it. Seating at a wedding is designed to enjoy food, rest your feet, and toast to speeches. Everyone will be up mingling, dancing, and enjoying your celebration so stressing and making charts is only complicating your planning process! As long as everyone has a spot and your planning/coordination team knows where to put each place marker, exhale. If you feel especially overwhelmed with a big or complicated guest list, you can always turn to your planner to add a dash of organization into the mix to get it moving.

Until next time, happy planning!

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Photos: Chris & Becca Photography