Mrs. Kiwi, Los Angeles
Age and Occupation in 06: 27, Bookkeeper
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, P.E. Teach/Coach @ private schools in LA
Engagement Date: March 31, 2006
Wedding Date: November 3, 2007
Venue: Radisson Hotel
About Me: I'm a bookkeeper who failed high school algebra. I'm currently living in Los Angeles, literally a street over from where I grew up with Mr. Kiwi, my honey of three years. We have a jumbo mini-dachshund (seriously, he's huuuuge), and we're planning an autumn themed wedding on a shoestring, paid for by ourselves. The wedding date is my late grandma's birthday, I needed her there somehow, and that seemed like the best way for us. I can't believe I'm a Bee! I couldn't be more proud!
The Unseatables
October 15th, 2007 @ 2:51 pm by Mrs. Kiwi
In an effort to make it easier on Mr. Kiwi and I, we’re assigning tables but not seats. With a guest list totaling 140 people at the most, we’ll have 15 tables of random numbers from the full ten to a meager 6. It’s funny because we have a few tables that filled up fast, since we knew the combination would work, and was happy with it (and happy to LEAVE it).
Unfortunately, this flow of “perfect seat mates” has left us with a few unseatables. Unseatables are the guests who come alone, know no one, and aren’t particularly outgoing and friendly. So, as I know it’s wrong to seat them all at the same table (can you imagine a table full of non-talkers?), I’m going to have to place them at tables with friendly people and big talkers.
I want people at our wedding to be very comfortable, but when it comes to seating guests, it’s so hard to please everyone! As it is, I have to seat my parents at different tables, their families at different tables, and Mr. Kiwi’s mom’s side is seated at a different table from his dad’s side. Drama-rama! It’s so hard playing the diplomat at these things!
How are you going about seating these unseatables?
13 Responses to “The Unseatables”
We are tackling this problem next weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing what people say about where to put, um, difficult people.
i’m guessing this is probably the hardest thing about planning seating! it was for me, and my sisters, and my cousins…
instead of having the “outcast” tables, we ended up grouping some of our more outgoing guests with some of these unseatables. for example, my sisters and their husbands would sit together, but they didn’t care where. since they’re used to meeting new people, and all work in corporate, we put them together with a few neighbors that knew other people there, but also were outgoing. we then put a few unseatables there that were in corporate. it worked out great - so smaller groups of people knew each other at the table, but we tried to make it so it wasn’t 80% people who knew each other, more like 40%, 40%, 20%. and we tried to put people together that had stuff in common.
it also helped that we had several get togethers at our house before the big day so people could get to know each other.
The unseatables are getting sprinkled on all our extended family and friends’ tables. We thought about their interests and matched them up with people who had similar hobbies, etc.
I think nejgne’s approach is a good one. I’m also trying to put people with things in common together. We have a handful of guests who speak Spanish, one of whom speaks English quite poorly so we’re putting them all together; another group who are all big world travellers and I know they’ll end up talking about it because they all have accents! So they’re being put together.
We’re considering making up some trivia icebreakers to put on the tables so that guests will have a few things to start talking about. Such as a little multiple choice quiz they can fill out about the bride & groom, or some info about each guest at that table.
I know exactly what you mean. A big help for me was to make a spreadsheet in Excel so I could easily move people around on a whim.
As it turns out, our guest list went from 150 to 85 (wow color us unpopular!) so with as much room to play around as we have, we’ve decided to give up on a seating chart and just reserve three tables at the front (my mom, my dad, his parents) and let everyone else fend for themselves. If you have the space, maybe consider this. I think we are going to ensure seating for 100 so no couple is left without a seat while all the tables have a single open spot.
I’m trying to think of how I could keep my mom and his mom from speaking to each other the entire weekend. 
Wouldn’t it be lovely to have complete blocking where I could dictate “This is where you walk and sit and no you can’t go over there and bother that person! Get back over here! What are you doing?! Stop it!!”
*Sigh*
We thought long and hard about this one and ultimately decided not to do seating at all. Our figuring was this:
-people know who they do and don’t want to spend time with so those drama-rama situations are generally avoided by people themselves - they don’t like each other? they don’t choose to sit together.
-it made for a looser seating situation (it was also a five station buffet situation, so no worries about what you were choosing off the menu) and people actually mingled a lot more together and would leave a table and go to another one for dessert to sit with those friends over there, etc.
-those shy people that generally don’t know where to sit and are those “unseatables” were quickly taken care of by our really outgoing guests who are the type to find someone sitting alone at a table and say “HEY! Anyone sitting here? No? Great!” and take over the conversation.
-pairings of people that I would have never thought of occurred and were wonderful. Friends from college eating dinner with business associates of my dad and getting jobs - who knew!? I never would have sat them together on my own!
I think the things that made this work were 1) over 200 people there so lots of seating available and enough variety of people to go around, 2) buffet meal so no waiter had to worry about people moving around or serving the fish or beef to the wrong person and it was a lavish over the top buffet so no one was complaining there, 3) a sign at the front of the reception that said “open seating” which alerted people and a whole cocktail hour of mingling and then entering together and choosing to move on from that conversation or sit together and continue talking, 4) out of towners invited with special close in town friends to the rehearsal dinner the night before so there were some connections made before hand when they walked in.
Let me tell you - made my life TONS easier. No seating cards, no table names/numbers/signs, no figuring it all out, no freaking out if one or two more people who didn’t RSVP showed up or didn’t
I went the same way as thistleorchid. We were just about the tackle the whole seating chart thing when we decided to scrap it. Hardly anyone RSVP’d on time and we felt better about avoiding the stress all together.
What we did instead was put the names of everyone we thought was going to be there on our favors (with a few generic “guest” tags just in case). Our guests used their favors as place cards for themselves and were able to sit with whoever they wanted. We only blocked out a table for us in the center and a table for our vendors on the side.
As far as I could tell from the guests, it worked out great and bonus…no stress for us!
some advice from a semi-antisocial person. I would prefer to be seated next to “unseatable” person. i absolutely hate making small talk with strangers, so sitting w/ someone else who also doesn’t want to make small talk would be great. just because we’re not socializing doesn’t mean we’re not having fun =]
I think this is the reason a dinner buffet with open seating is the tradition here in the South… the unseatables, unpleasables and unspeakables are left to battle it out amongst themselves! 
Just avoid seating the really obvious no-nos together (i.e. both divorced parents or what-not) and then don’t worry too much about the rest… no one is coming to the wedding specifically to make a scene, and odds are, they’ll behave. If someone is too unhappy, they’ll just sit where they want.
I liked the idea of the “sprinkling” as well, although it was great to hear dysha’s take as a “less social person…” so, hmm! I’ll have to tackle this one as well when the date comes closer! Great post to get me thinking about this stuff though, Miss K!
