Your Guide To Building A Beautiful Seating Chart
Seating Chart Guide
Everything was beautiful and arrived at my venue ready to go! I definitely recommend RBW for your stationery and printed material needs.
-H. Harrison
While assigning seats is the most tempting option to skip, there’s a reason skipping any sort of seating assignment isn’t very popular.
By allowing guests to decide where they want to sit and who they want to sit with, you’ll need to account for more seats than you actually need, which will essentially result in an unexpected bill from the caterer and venue.
Why? If your wedding menu consists of food stations, caterers and wait staff will have no way of keeping track of your count or logistically releasing table to food stations.
This is because some tables will wind up full—or even overfilled, with guests bringing over chairs from other tables to join a group of friends or relatives—and others will be half-empty.
Do yourself and your guests a favor by assigning tables and or seats.
Most guests don’t want to be seated with people they don’t know. Consider grouping guests age, interests, profession, marital status, family relationships
You would then need to focus mainly on these groups of guests:
Elderly
Head Table
Family and Extended Bridal Party
Single Friends
While arranging this particular group, try to make everyone feel comfortable by offering a mix of familiar and new faces at each table. And, of course, be tactful: Avoid seating people together who have a history they wish they could forget. Let’s breakdown the importance of this second group of guests.
SEATING ELDERLY GUESTS AT YOUR WEDDING
You’ll want your elderly guests to have the best time possible on the day, so you’ll need to think about their particular needs. Be sensitive to the needs of the elderly—they’ll appreciate not having to sit near the band or DJ, where electronic amplifiers will make conversation nearly impossible. Seat elderly guests away from the dance floor. Leave extra space for guests with wheelchairs and crutches.
ARRANGE SEATING AT HEAD TABLE
The couple sits in the middle, the maid of honor and bridesmaids sit next to the groom, and the best man and groomsmen are next to the bride. Of course, since they are each of your closest friends or siblings, feel free to swap that so the maid of honor is next to the bride and the best man is next to the groom.
ARRANGE SEATING FOR FAMILY & BRIDAL PARTY
Spouses, dates, and children of the bridal party sit at regular guest tables. Parents, the officiant, grandparents, siblings, godparents, ring bearers, and flower girls sit at honor tables near the head table.
Single Friends
Don’t throw all your single friends haphazardly at one table. Instead, seat people based on their shared interests, not marital status. Connect guests with similar hobbies, jobs, or interests, and try to make everyone feel comfortable by offering a mix of familiar and new faces at each table
**It’s important to know that the trend of having a head table is on the decline. These days, most attendants prefer to sit with their spouses, dates, and friends. Furthermore, round tables allow for better conversation and are usually more fun.
One popular trend is to have a sweetheart table instead of a head table, where just the bride and groom sit. Or you can have a small round table for the bride, groom, maid of honor, best man, and their spouses or dates.
YOUR GUIDE TO A BEAUTIFUL WEDDING SEATING CHART
Guiding your guests to their seats can actually be tons of fun. If you’ve ever attended a wedding reception before, you know how difficult it can be to locate your seat. You would ideally want to arrange your seating chart in alphabetical order. This is the advice I give to all of our couples unless their guest list is UNDER 100 guests. You want your guests can easily locate their names amongst all of the fun hustle activity during cocktail hour. Imagine your elderly guest trying to locate their name amongst a list of 250 people when grouped by table. If you must setup your seating chart by the table for aesthetically pleasing reasons like this Acrylic Cube Chart, then it helps to have a user nearby with an alphabetized list in hand to assist guests with finding their table or create another small chart placed by the entrance in alphabetical order.
Once you have your organized list grouped together, set up a new sheet and break them down in alphabetical order. My Guest List Planning Guide is already set up for success, this robust customized tracker and guide I use with all my clients so you can arrange your guests for addressing, manage RSVPs, group your guests for seating arrangments, and so much more. You can read more about it here.
At RBW Stationery, we eliminate the confusion altogether by creating a seating chart that’s functional and easy on the eyes so your seating chart will seamlessly be integrated into your wedding décor. From Paper and acrylic to fabric, we’ve got you covered.
Need help building your seating chart? Join my FREE 1-Hour Training on how to design the ultimate seating chart for your wedding.
about the author
Ruby Brewer-Watkins, is a Certified Wedding Planner who specializes in wedding stationery. Her guest list planning and creative process have created efficiency within her client projects, which allowed her to effectively collaborate, design and create beautiful wedding invitations and “day of” stationery for countless couples since 2015.
Hi, I’m Ruby, your creative wedding professional. FINALLY, you made it! You can catch a glimpse into a few things I love, specifically how I passionately create wedding invitations and details for the “day of” for couples. I hope that that my blog posts and articles contained within this beautiful space truly inspire you. I offer unfiltered advice and space to give yourself permission to be creative and explore options, and ideas that are available to you to celebrate life's greatest moments.
