Wedding Seating Charts: What You Need to Know
Seating Charts. That is almost a four letter word when planning your wedding. It’s the last thing you want to think about or do. Seating charts are a huge headache that you can’t even really do until a week or two before your wedding. Like we don’t have enough to do that close to the wedding?! So how do you decide if you need to do a seating chart or not? Hopefully this article will help you decide.
Before we get started, I would like to stress that this is my personal opinion and I realize that not everyone will feel the way that I do. But my hope is that you can see this dilemma from a different point of view than some of those you may have heard in the past.
I have been to weddings with seating charts, I have been to weddings without seating charts. I personally opted for a seating chart at my own wedding and looking back I’m so glad I did! I honestly had never been to a wedding WITHOUT a seating chart until after my wedding.
I honestly did NOT want to do a seating chart at all (who does?!). I was only inviting about 100 people, most of whom knew each other. I really didn’t see the point. I only ended up doing a seating chart because my mom insisted on it--mainly because she and my dad are recently divorced and there’s a little tenseness there I suppose. I tried telling her “I will do a seating plan for just our immediate families but not everyone”...That didn’t fly with her, so I finally broke down and agreed to do one. (To see more from my wedding click here.)
So, why am I glad now that I did a seating chart?
I recently went to my first-ever wedding without a seating chart. I just went as a guest, I didn’t have a vested interest in this wedding as a planner, bride, bridesmaid, etc., so it was a little bit of a different experience.
First, let me tell you, I am crazy shy. I know those of you who don’t know me probably wouldn’t think that, but I hate crowds. I have pretty bad social anxiety. My husband does too.
So, this wedding was a buffet style, semi-formal wedding with about 60 or so guests there. All of the above are reasons a lot of people feel they don’t need a seating chart, which is why I wanted to point it out.
I only knew one other person there (besides my husband) and that one person was a part of the wedding party. So my husband and I had absolutely no idea where to sit. We didn’t want to crash a family table (we didn’t know who might have been family or not!) and we didn’t want to sit at a table that had only a few seats left because maybe they were saving them for someone else! So my husband and I went to the buffet and then sat on a bench on the outskirts of the wedding with our plates in our laps to eat. Let’s just say, that was not the best experience. We also were not the only ones sitting on that bench, even though there were quite a few open seats at tables. I do realize that this was our personal choice, there were open tables, so I do not blame this on anyone but us. However, if there had been a seating chart, we would not have chosen to eat from our laps.
Looking back now, I am so glad I didn’t do that to my guests. While all of my guests knew at least a table full of other people there, to be honest, that still wasn’t enough to make sure everyone would have been comfortable. When you don’t assign tables, it can make your guests feel like they are back in the high school cafeteria. Do you remember that movie Mean Girls? On Katy’s first day at the new school (and once all her friends disowned her) she sat in the bathroom eating her lunch. Yeah, that. If my husband hadn’t been there I might have been that girl sitting in the bathroom eating...I’m joking...kind of.
As the bride, it can be super, super tempting to let your guests sit wherever they want. Seating charts are HARD WORK. You have to wait until a week or two before your wedding to finalize them after you get rsvps, which sucks, and then there are often last-minute changes when someone who rsvp'd cancels. You have to think about each person and decide who has a similar personality or who might not get along with who, whether you want family members together or to force some mingling by mixing a few people who know each other with some who don't. There’s a TON of logistics involved in a seating chart. But as a guest, it makes a big difference.
Another con to not doing a seating chart… you have to make sure you have extra seats and potentially extra tables than the number of guests you actually expect. I can pretty much guarantee that none of your tables will be full (again because some people will simply not sit at a table with people they don’t know). That ends up costing you so much more! More place settings, favors, silverware, drinkware, and even centerpieces! The only way to make sure all your tables are full (and you don’t end up with tons of extra unnecessary expenses) is to do a seating chart.
I don’t recommend that you do a seating chart by chair. That is really overkill. All you have to do is make a chart and place certain people at certain tables. They can figure out which seat to take at the table themselves.
There is a really helpful website that makes seating charts WAY easier. It’s called AllSeated. First off, let me just say -- I am in no way affiliated with them. I get absolutely nothing for you using them, I just love this site so much that I have to share! So the first thing is, start using it ASAP. Start plugging your guests in right away. This website can keep track of your guest list, addresses, phone numbers, rsvps, and there is even a place to write in “comments” such as gifts given so you remember to send a thank you card afterward!
Once you have your guest list plugged in, you can actually make a 2D (and 3D) diagram of your venue, add the number of tables you want, and then move your guests from table to table super easily. You can play with seating all your guests, or only add people as they rsvp “yes”! You can even do it to the correct size. For example, say your venue is 30x80 and you have 30” round tables that seat 6 people. You can totally plug in the right size stuff and see exactly how many tables you can fit in the space, and move them around so they make the most sense to you! So awesome for helping you visualize what it will look like.
One of the other coolest things about this website: You can print out a list instantly of guests who’ve rsvped “yes”, print out a sheet with your table numbers and which guest goes at which table, and even more. If you have help setting up your venue or you’ve hired a planner, you can hand everyone involved a print out of exactly how the tables are supposed to be arranged! Worried about who might try to crash your wedding and going to have a bouncer at the door? Print out lists of everyone who said yes or everyone you invited for your bouncer!
AllSeated seriously makes life so much easier when planning your wedding. I can’t even go into all the cool stuff you can do because then we would be here all day. Just trust me, you need to check it out. Oh - I almost forgot the BEST part of it. If you get stuck and can’t figure out how to do something (anything!) they have live chat agents 24/7 that respond right away and are super helpful and nice! I used that feature so many times. Even if I just couldn’t remember how to do something that I did know how to do, a real live person was one click away to remind me.
Did I mention AllSeated is free?! Yeah. FREE. Not kidding.
Did you do a seating chart? What’s your opinion on seating charts? Let us know in the comments!