Let s talk today about creating your seating chart!

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1 Let s talk today about creating your seating chart! This is something that s done in the final weeks leading up to the wedding, and can be a big pain. I was thinking about why it s such a hassle, and I think it s the combination of it being somewhat of a last minute task, in those final weeks you have so much going on and this is just one more thing to deal with. And you put together a group of 100 people or more with family drama, lots of booze, and social awkwardness, and yeah, I can see why wearing charts are pretty high on the list of annoying things to do. My first tip to you - why do we need to make our RSVP deadline two weeks before the wedding? Make it four. If someone is close enough to me that I am inviting them to my

2 wedding, and they can t get their personal calendar figured out enough to know a MONTH in advance if they can make it to my wedding or not I don t know. I feel like being invited to a wedding is a pretty big deal, and it s hard for me to imagine why the RSVP deadline needs to be so close. In my humble opinion, I look at a wedding invite from someone who s close to me, and even if that invitation comes a few months in advance of the date, I m clearing my calendar and you better believe I will be there. Ask your guests to say yes or no like a month ahead of the date. You can still give your caterer the final number closer to the wedding in case you have a couple people flake out at the last minute, I hope that doesn t happen but come on. If you re in the earlier stages of planning your wedding and you haven t sent out invitations already, consider bucking the trend of every single wedding etiquette website out there and ask your guests for a little more time. Do yourself this favor, time is your friend and a couple extra weeks on this at the end will make a big difference. OK so anyway, this way hopefully you can get the bulk of your RSVPs back more like a month in advance, and you can start working on the seating chart early. If you can get a solid outline of who should sit where, then you can always make little adjustments towards the end.

3 This is a classic case of easier said than done, I know I use that phrase a lot, because some of this stuff seems like it really shouldn t be that hard, but then you get to actually trying to do it, and it can be tricky. I can t do your seating chart for you, no one can, and I can t promise to make it easy, but here are some more tips to get you started. Keep in mind that yes, guests will be sitting in these seats for the meal, the toast, a couple speeches, but we re talking an hour, hour and a half max. They WILL NOT be in these seats for the entire wedding, and there will be a ton of time for everyone to be up, dancing, drinking, and hanging out with whoever they want. So don t feel like you re going to make or break someone s entire enjoyment of your wedding with your seating chart. It s a big deal, but it s not the end of the world if you end up with a couple odds and ends that get thrown together and aren t 100% the best fit. As long as people at the table don t have any outward obvious animosity of issues with each other, mark it off and move on. It s not worth a whole ton of stressing out. Lots of times I see seating charts where the sweetheart table is at the front of the room. What about putting you & the groom in the middle of the room instead? This is a nice way to figuratively surround yourselves with your guests, with your loved ones, and I really like the symbolism of that. This way you have more opportunity to have more people close to you, as opposed to a couple rows of tables that are across the entire room and super far away.

4 Do you want to have a sweetheart table at all? If sitting alone with your groom and having a hundred people staring at the two of you all night seems a little strange, you can always create a table with you & both of your parents, or you and your maid of honor, best man, and their dates, OR a huge table of the wedding party, groomsmen and bridesmaids. Consider here letting your wedding party members sit with their dates, rather than separated from them at a head table. This creates an immediate comfort level for everyone - your bridesmaids and groomsmen may be dating someone who doesn t know anyone else there, and to put that date off at a table with nine other people they don t know is awkward. You can still have the wedding party sitting near you & the groom, but just consider it as one way to eliminate seating guesswork. Depending on the size of your wedding party, it might not be possible to have everyone at the same table, that s OK, just distribute them across a few tables near you. For the actual logistics, I m a big fan of getting a huge poster board, or maybe a couple of them, drawing circles for all the tables, and then have at it with post it notes, little sticky notes. Write each guests name on a sticker, and dive in, it s the best way to hammer it out. This way you can easily move things around without crossing out, erasing, and making a big scribbly mess of the board.

5 You ll quickly see connections, obvious people who should sit together. Consider people who work together, went to school together, are the same age range. You know all the obvious stuff, keep family conflicts separated, keep your drunk uncle away from your sober conservative godmother, stuff like that. Keep older guests away from loud speakers and the dance floor, where there will be lots of noise and people shuffling back and forth. Consider your parents and siblings, those people closest to you and be sure you take into account the sight line to your table, the cake cutting, make sure those people are sitting in places where they can see the big important moments really well. Let s take a step back, and talk about the differences between assigned tables, and assigned seats. In most cases, I think assigning guests to a table and then having them sit in whatever chair is available is just fine. If you have catering and a seated dinner menu with different meal options that your guests have pre-selected, you ll just need to indicate their meal selection on a place card in some way so that your servers know who ordered what. So for example, you have a place card table with every guests name and table number. They enter the wedding reception, pick

6 up their name card, and it tells them which table to sit at. On the name card, you can have a small decoration like a flower or a jewel that is color coded to match the meal selection. So if you re serving meat, vegetarian, and a pasta option, you choose say blue for meat, green for veggie, and pink for pasta, and this way your server sees a pink flower on aunt jane s card, and knows that she ordered pasta. Remember - your seating chart is important, but it s not going to make or break anyone s enjoyment of your wedding. Keep it simple, try not to stress out too much, and happy planning!

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