The Dreaded Seating Arrangements

Like most brides, I had heard my share of horror stories about figuring out the seating arrangement. The "so-and-so can't sit anywhere near so-and-so"/too many people and not enough tables/"why do they get to sit near the bride and groom but we have to sit in the corner with the photographers?" type of drama.

Luckily, our families and friends are mostly drama free, and our parents entrusted us with the seating arrangement duties, so we didn't have too many opinions overwhelming things. Although mostly all of our wedding details were somehow aided with the use of a computer, this was one thing that we decided to do sans computer, by the recommendation of my Matron of Honor. She said that for her wedding, the easiest way to figure out seating had been to simply write each guest's name on a piece of paper, lay everything out on a big table, and move things around until we got it right. Well, most of the surfaces of our apartment were covered with wedding paraphernalia at that point, so the floor was our next best option.


Mr. Cupcake spent about 10 minutes writing each guest's name on a small piece of paper, and then we started making our groups. Our tables could fit 8 to 12 guests, with 10 being ideal, but this range allowed us a good amount of flexibility. After only about 20 minutes of grouping everyone together, we were happy with our arrangements. (I was especially impressed by how quickly this came together considering that a lot of my friends don't know each other — I tend to have lots of little social circles instead of one big one.) Once the groups were in place, we simply paper clipped each group together, figured out where each group should sit in relation to our head table and the dance floor, and voila — done!

Okay, so this process wasn't totally void of technology.... the seating chart I laid out in Adobe Illustrator so I could email it to the catering manager. The grayed out tables are showing the tables that would have fit on each side of the dance floor had we needed them (per the instructions that the people at The Desmond had given to me). The different colored type just made it easier to differentiate between the table number and the number of guests at each table.


I already had an Excel spreadsheet set up with each guest's name and meal choice, so once the arranging was done I simply added a column for table number on my spreadsheet to fill in the appropriate numbers. This spreadsheet then served as my guide for setting up our place cards, and also as a reference for the catering manager of the who/where/what.

Instead of sitting with our bridal party at a traditional long head table with everyone facing the dance floor, we decided it would be nice to seat the bridal party with their significant others and friends, especially since we would need to be visiting with each table and wouldn't be spending all of our time sitting with them. Mr. Cupcake and I chose to sit at a round table with our parents and siblings, which was really nice and much cozier than a long table, and they understood that we had to run around a bit to chat with our guests. I think this also made figuring out the rest of the seating easier because we weren't splitting the bridal party up from their significant others.

As much as I would have been lost without my computer for most wedding details, working out the seating was one detail that was much easier without the complication of technology in the beginning. Have you depended on technology for most of your details, or have you found that some things are just easier done the old fashioned way?