Wedding Blog

We are tackling this problem next weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing what people say about where to put, um, difficult people.

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 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.

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

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 =]

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.