Deciding who to invite to your wedding can be a tricky task in itself, but this unfortunately isn’t the last time the guests will be at the centre of your wedding planning. Figuring out where to seat everyone for the wedding breakfast or reception can often be one of the hardest parts of organising the big day.
Take a look at our ideas to reduce the stress of planning your wedding seating chart.
Wedding seating chart planning tips
Here are some general tips for figuring out your seating plan.
Get visual
Get a dry-erase board or some large pieces of paper and draw out your tables. This will help you to visualise the space you’ve got to work with. Your wedding venue can help you with the size, shape and orientation of your tables, as well as how many guests you have room for.
Write the names of your guests on sticky notes to make it easy to move them around and try different configurations before setting on the final plan. You can always take a photo of your first draft so you’ve got a record of it if you want to try something different.
Start early
While it’s tempting to wait until all of those RSVPs have come in so you’re certain on numbers, you’ll save yourself a lot of stress if you avoid leaving it to the last minute.
Figure out the general plan, making it easier to tweak the arrangements as your RSVPs come in.
Where to seat your wedding guests
Here are a few ideas to help you to decide who to place at which table.
Divide and conquer
Create a spreadsheet of all your wedding guests and add a column to help you to categorise your relationship with them.
This could include immediate family, friends, colleagues or extended family. You may have different categories within these, such as friends from university, friends from your hometown, friends of the bride and friends of the groom.
You’ve got a friend in me
You might have a few guests in attendance that don’t really know anyone else at the wedding. While people sometimes opt for a ‘singles table’, this can be a little embarrassing, and doesn’t really help those without a plus-one to mingle.
Instead, try to figure out who you think a certain friend might gel with. Seat that friend in a group with similar interests or a similar temperament, so they can have a great time meeting and interacting with new people instead of feeling awkward.
Everyone for themselves
Instead of allocating individual seats, just allocate table numbers. That way, you can still be sure of a good mix of guests at each table, but with less effort on your part!
Of course, you could always throw caution to the wind and opt for completely unallocated seating. This certainly helps to reduce the stress by getting rid of a fairly hefty item on your to-do list!
You could even leave the whole thing up to fate and draw names from a hat—though it would of course be polite to put couples and families on the same piece of paper.
We’re here to help
At Abbeywood Estate, we’ve held countless weddings, and we’re no strangers to the complexities of the seating chart.
When you book your wedding with us, we’ll be on hand to help you with every aspect of the big day, and can offer advice on table configurations and how to organise your guests.
