If you’re like most people, you’ve probably attended weddings in the past, picked up your escort card, and found your table without ever really thinking about the work that has to go into making a wedding seating chart. For many of my clients, the wedding seating chart is one of the most stressful parts of planning—I’ve seen clients both cry and fight with each other (and their families) over them. Just recently a client of mine posted something on Facebook about their wedding seating chart, and one of the responses summed it up perfectly as being, “Like Tetris, but with emotions.” By nature, wedding seating charts have to be made at the very end of the planning process (after your RSVPs are in) when you have a ton of other stuff on your plate. Plus, they’re not something you can delegate to someone else. (As I tell my clients—I could do your wedding seating chart for you, but since I don’t know your friends and family, it’s entirely possible I’d end up putting your conservative great-aunt next to your anarchist college roommate.)
It’s important to note here that you certainly don’t have to have a seating chart, and the logistics of a seating chartless wedding are something I’ll go into in a future post (because, hey, you don’t even have to have tables at your wedding!) but for those of you who are in the midst of staring at your guest list trying to figure out how exactly this is going to work? While I can’t promise to make the creation of your seating chart painless, here are some tips I’ve learned over the years that might just make it manageable. At most weddings, your guests are sitting at their tables for at max ninety minutes of what is a pretty long event. So, while ideally everyone has someone at their table who they like, and no one is at a table with someone they can’t stand, don’t stress too much about breaking all of your guests into the most-perfect-groups-of-eight ever—they’ll have hours to hang out with whoever they want. Now, if your wedding consists of a six-course plated meal that’s going to take three hours, you may want to work a little harder on creating great groups, but this is also where I encourage people to let the guests who won’t know anyone else at your wedding (see: that one former co-worker you’ve stayed close to, or childhood friend who lives out of state and doesn’t know any of your current friends) to bring a plus one
, even if you’re not allowing them across the board. For the majority of weddings, assigning your guests to tables, but not to specific seats at those tables is going to be fine—with the exception of a multi-course, plated meal with multiple selections for each course. If you do assign seats, you’re going to need both escort cards (which get picked up at the entry and tell you your table number) and place cards, which are on the table and tell you which seat is yours. With assigned tables you only need escort cards, or you can make things even easier, and scrap the escort cards for a wedding seating chart (which is really just a big poster with a list of people’s names and table numbers on it. A chart also has the bonus benefit of not being able to get lost, which somehow always happens with escort cards even when no one is leaving the room). I’m semi-convinced that the sweetheart table (a raised and/or “head” table at the front of the room where you and your partner sit) was originally invented for couples with acrimoniously divorced parents, since one way to avoid having to pick who to sit with is to sit with no one.
But a sweetheart table is not your only option. If your families all get along well (or, well-enough) a table made up of you and your partner and both sets of parents can be great, or a table with your wedding party and their dates works just as well. Regardless, I often encourage couples to put their table in the middle of the floor plan, instead of on one edge so that you can put the maximum number of other tables close by and avoid anyone feeling like they’re in the “cheap seats” on the opposite side of the room. The fewest people you want per 60″ round is six—less than this and the table will feel oddly big and empty. You can see that people are pretty spread out here, but are just above feeling too spread out. Eight is the ideal number—it feels full, but not crowded, everyone is going to be able to pull their chairs in all the way, and still have some elbow room. Note how close the place settings and the chairs are to each other. Yes, ten people is really the maximum you can put at a 60″ round—there’s simply not space to squeeze an eleventh in there and still have enough space to pull chairs close enough to actually sit (or, more importantly, eat) at the table.
The most common size of rectangle table is 6′ by 30″. They seat either six or eight people, depending on if you use the endcaps (short side of the table.) But how many tables can you fit into your room? This is a big one people—do not forget to leave room for people to walk between tables and to actually get in and out of their seats. The standard is a minimum of 60″ between tables, and… it’s correct. Pictured below—about 48″ between tables:But then you pull the chairs out (which they are when people are actually sitting in them, unless your guests are somehow… flat?) And really, there’s not enough room for anyone (a waiter, or guest trying to get to their seat) to easily get in between those chairs. Do not let this happen to you—keep those tables 60″ away from each other (or, at least 30″ away from a wall). Putting Your Seating Chart Together Okay, so you know how many people are coming, how many tables you have, and how they’re going in the room—how do you arrange all these people without losing your minds?
But, for those of you on the low-tech end of things, I like to suggest a super easy paper alternative that can be done with things you likely have sitting in your house. Write each guest’s name on a post-it note, and line up as many half sheets of plain paper as you have tables. Then proceed to stick those suckers down, and move people around until you have the appropriate number of people at each table, and you are satisfied with the arrangement. Take a picture, or, better, transcribe this list into a bullet point list or spreadsheet (if you have a master guest list spreadsheet, just add a column labeled “table number” to it!). I generally encourage people to ask their closest friends and family members for input on the wedding seating chart—you may be surprised to learn that your parents would really rather be at a table with their college friends instead of their siblings. I also encourage people to think about mixing up groups of friends and family. At a friend’s wedding a few years ago they put a lot of thought into blending groups—everyone had at least one person at their table they already knew, but then other people who the couple thought they might have something in common with.