5 Fantastic Seating Chart Tips For Your Wedding | WONA Concept
5 Tips in Plotting a Wedding Seating Chart
Planning a wedding is exciting. It’s the biggest day of your life and it’s going to be beautiful. But that doesn't mean there aren't challenges. Your seating plan may pose some questions and conundrums. Here’s how to plot your seating chart to be as perfect as your big day.
Weddings are a time for coming together with friends, family, and loved ones from near and far to celebrate the magic of marriage. But without the right amount of planning and organization, weddings also have the potential to become a little chaotic.
Creating a wedding seat chart is a simple yet highly impactful way to bring ease, order, and structure to your big day. By assigning your guests their seats beforehand, you can reduce the chances of social tension and help everyone feel as comfortable and connected to one another as possible.
If you need a helping hand, look at our helpful tips for planning a brilliant wedding seating chart. This advice can help your big day run as smoothly and gracefully as possible.
Why Is A Wedding Seating Chart Important?
There are many great reasons to coordinate a chart that tells guests where they need to sit. First, people like knowing they have been specially assigned a particular seat. It makes them feel recognized and included in the wedding plans and prevents those who come alone from feeling left out.
Weddings—especially ones with lots of guests—can become a little frenzied without proper direction. Everyone is so excited after the ceremony that finding a seat at reception can be difficult.
Second, while some brides are lucky enough to have family and friends that get along, others are not. For this reason, having control over who sits next to who can be of immeasurable value. It allows you to keep social controversies to a minimum and ensures that everyone is as content and amicable as possible.
Plus, the last thing you want on your wedding day is to be asked a million questions about where your guests should sit. So, spend a few hours creating a seating chart and save yourself the drama.
5 Tips For Making A Great Wedding Seating Chart
Knowing the value of a wedding seating chart is one thing, but actually creating one is another. If you are feeling unsure about how to go about the process of drawing up, assembling, and editing a chart that meets your needs, the following five tips can help.
Start at the center
At any wedding, the most important people are the bride and groom, followed by their closest family members, friends, and members of the bridal party. If you’re not sure where to begin drawing up your wedding seating chart, start there.
Decide where you and your spouse-to-be are going to sit and then start filling up the rest of the table with the people who you want most to share it with. Your parents, siblings, grandparents, best friends—anyone who you think deserves to be at the main table.
Then start working outwards, filling up the tables closest to you with cousins, aunts, uncles, and close friends. Once you have filled up all your tables, you can start shifting names around to create the best possible social dynamic for your reception.
Don’t overcrowd your tables
When it comes to the celebratory wedding reception that follows a ceremony, most guests like to relax and socialize with their fellow attendees. In an age where social distancing is also a priority, this is also a factor to consider.
Instead of cramming a dozen guests into one table, try to spread out your seats as much as you can for a lighter, more companionable flow.
The more tables you set up, the more control you have over the seating arrangements. By minimizing the headcount at each table, you can be even more particular about who sits next to who, and perhaps more importantly, who doesn’t sit next to who.
Book your venue first
It can be tricky to create a proper wedding seating chart without prior knowledge about the space it will fill and what style it is. The shape of the tables, the number of tables, the entrance and exit routes, and the positioning of various amenities will all come into play when drawing up this important chart.
The layout of your venue can play an instrumental role in dictating the structure of your wedding seating arrangements. For example, you might want to set up the table with your grandparents or other elderly folk close to the entrance and exit, making it easier for them to get in and out.
If you have a kid’s table, consider putting them all together by the dancefloor, where they have the freedom to be noisy and move around.
If any of your guests are disabled and require crutches or a wheelchair ramp, knowing the layout of your venue can also help curate the tables in a way that is as accessible as possible. No matter what your guests’ requirements might be, waiting to find out what your venue looks like is always a helpful idea.
Choose between assigned tables or chairs
Although assigning each guest their very own seat has been a popular trend throughout the history of traditional weddings, it is not the default setting for every wedding seating chart.
If you don’t like the idea of individually assigned seats, assigned tables can provide a refreshing and more flexible alternative. Instead of giving each guest a table and a seat number, you can simply give them a table number and let the people assigned to each table decide what formation they want to sit in.
Assigned tables tend to work really well for weddings with a smaller headcount, or for weddings where all the guests already know each other and get along relatively well.
Just be sure to make the table numbers clear and easy to see so that guests don’t end up awkwardly hunting for them. A great idea is to make table numbers part of your decor and tie them in with your wedding color scheme. This makes them an attractive and functional feature.
Follow your instincts
Being strategic about your wedding seating chart can be a challenging task. So many people’s needs to consider, and only so many options for placement. But pleasing everyone is impossible, so don’t drive yourself into the ground trying to.
When it comes to choosing where your guests will sit at your wedding reception, try not to fixate too much on people’s picky preferences. Trust your gut and go with what you think is right. After all, nobody knows your guests better than you and your future spouse!
Meta title: 5 Fantastic Seating Chart Tips For Your Wedding | WONA Concept Meta Description: Find out how you can make your wedding seating chart a success. These five tips will ensure that everyone on your guest list feels like they have a place.
Story by Gladys Torres
Gladys is a writer who's an advocate for self care and leading a healthy lifestyle. She hopes that her writing can inspire others to prioritize their mental and physical well being. With an absolutely love for food and self proclaimed foodie, when she's not writing, Gladys loves to experiment in the kitchen and try out new recipes.
