The Pros, Cons and Tools Of Creating A Successful Wedding Seating Plan

Is it necessary to have a seating plan for your wedding party? You might think otherwise, deeming that your guests can find their way to any comfortable seats. However, it is not as easy as it seems.

You'll want your big day to run as smoothly and perfectly as possible. And you know what? A huge part of that is an efficient table and seating plan. One of the main goals of a wedding table plan is to make the event a pleasant and comfortable experience for your guests. You'll want them, and yourself most especially, to be stress-free.

Yes, you'll save time and spare yourself from making some painstaking decisions if you skip devising your table plan, but honestly, your lackadaisical tendency isn't worth it.

The Pros of Creating a Wedding Seating Plan

Creating a seating plan for your wedding is an important step in ensuring that your guests have the best experience possible. Here are some of the benefits of creating a seating plan:

It allows you to create an atmosphere that is conducive to conversation and interaction among your guests. By strategically placing people who know each other or those who are hesitant to seat with someone, you'll be able to avoid awkwardness or inconveniences during your party

To create a successful wedding table plan, you need to know what its primary considerations are. They are listed below.

What Are The 5 Considerations For A Successful Seating Plan?

What options are available from your venue?

Do you have the option to choose a particular room depending on the number of your guests? What about the type (shapes) of tables that you can use? Can they provide your preference? What of these amenities will best suit the catering?

Taking into account that you're working with professionals, you can ask for suggestions from the venue because they are supposed to know what's best.

Is there going to be a top table or not?

Your decision on this matter can be tricky, especially when you're considering divorced parents and extended families.

An advisable choice is to utilise a long top table where people can sit at a comfortable distance. You can always have each party seated on opposite ends to play safe.

As an alternative, you can go for two round tables where every family can be accommodated. Paired with these is the sweetheart table which is a stand-alone table exclusively for the groom and bride.

The pro of the above option is that it seats the families together, particularly if they don't want to be away from their significant others.

The bride and the groom, on the other hand, can get an enjoyable and full view of their attendees. If you, as a couple, are not fond of being the centre of attention, you can decide on another set-up.

Are you going to designate a table for kids?

Kids are kids, and you don't want them screaming or running around at your wedding party. An advantage of a kids' table at a wedding reception is that it will keep these youngsters busy while they are specifically catered to.

Keeping the young ones preoccupied can be facilitated by providing them with activities to do. Among them is a cardboard table cover for colouring. As for the older children, a seating plan will allow them to settle in a space where they can avoid their parents' banal conversations.

If toddlers are present in the reception, you can ask the venue to distribute high chairs or prams where they can be positioned next to their parents.

Should you mix your seating assignments and allow your attendees to mingle?

Parties are a great way of mingling and getting to know other people. Would you consider mixing your guests as they are seated? It may be a viable idea for an evening event where everyone can enjoy themselves.

Nevertheless, you can try to be more sensitive. It is not comfortable to sit next to someone you don't know, and single guests, for the most part, can feel out of place.

Avoid the tendency to play matchmaker at your wedding reception by arranging an all singles table. Be more considerate by seating single guests with their known friends or relatives.

It will be easier and more thoughtful of you to categorise tables into those for your friends, college schoolmates, relatives and work colleagues, among others. Doing these enables you to set up the layout of your venue better as well.

What are the advantages of using a seating plan tool?

You need to be on top of things when designing your seating plan. In this case, a seating plan tool will be helpful. It is necessary in keeping your work organised and accurate, especially as you will need to amend it several times.

It would be embarrassing if someone gets left out or is improperly seated next to another person. Examples are relatives who may not be on good terms with each other, or two people who've had a relationship history. These are just to mention two. Many instances require you to seat people accordingly in your wedding party.

Heads and hands can work efficiently together with a seating plan tool. Being an electronic app, you can share or use it on the go. Your diagram can easily be printed and your venue and the event coordinator will greatly thank you for the convenience.

A big burden and stress will be lifted from your shoulder if you use a seating plan tool.

5 Practical and Useful Wedding Table Planner Tools

Perfect Table Plan

This amazing online wedding table planner is used by the BBC, the Ritz London and other famous establishments. If you want to test it, do so with its free trial.

The Perfect Table Plan tool is so handy you can accomplish your seating plan with it in an hour. Its click, drop and drag features work intuitively. You can assign menu choices and tinker with the table sizes. You can work with this app on the go or share it with others.

Top Table Planner

It's the simplicity of this tool that makes it favoured in the industry. Whether on your computer, tablet or smartphone, you can readily use this app. You can open it on any popular browser, and it's a jiffy to share and update your plan.

With just a basic click of a button, you can import your plan on this app from a Word document or Excel spreadsheet.

Wedding Mapper

This app is fantastic for ensuring that the wrong people don't get seated to the wrong location, like a grandma to the subwoofer. Being able to give a perspective of your venue dimensions, you can accurately create a layout of the tables and where your cake will be placed.

Hitched Wedding Planner

You can use this tool for free, and what's even better is that you can integrate it with the other planning tools on its website. When you mark a guest as "attending", all you do next is assign them a seat. You can log in to the site anywhere you go as long as you have an Internet connection and it is convenient to use with its click-and-drag function.

All Seated

This tool is the ultimate when it comes to seating plans. It'll give you a 360-degree perspective and even a virtual reality experience of your venue. This state-of-the-art platform allows you to visualise various themes for your event along with different colour schemes.

Final Thoughts

You cannot underestimate the importance of a wedding table and seating plan if you want your reception to be as orderly and as pleasant as can be. A wedding seating plan is a must-have for the perfect event. With everyone seated comfortably and truly relaxed, you can have a sensational and delightful celebration.