Weddingbee Blog

I’ve been skipping along, not at all stressed. Whenever anyone asked, the answer was, “I’m still waiting to feel overwhelmed or anxious.” Well, I finally got stressed. Yesterday, as I was going through my list and Mr. P was playing golf, I realized we hadn’t done anything with the seating chart. I always knew, and ALWAYS said that I’m probably forgetting something pretty major. So there I was. Prophecy fulfilled.

Thankfully, Mrs. Bee gave me a complimentary trial of this wonderful software called PerfectTablePlan. So I dug around in my email to find the license key for it. I gotta tell you, it was a life saver, and really, really easy to use. It sort of reminds me of Visio.

You upload (we have everything in a spreadsheet) or enter in your guests’ names by hand. You can do it in singles, couples or groups.

Then you specify the type of table and table arrangement. Square, round, number of chairs, etc.

Then you drag and drop in your guests’ names. It’s that easy. You can move the tables and guests around, so there is no more need for Post-It notes and confusion. I really like it because it’s clear, clean, and visual. Every time you move someone in a seat, they get “marked off” or un-highlighted. If you replace someone and that someone is missing a seat, they get sent back to the guest list, highlighted.

It’s a really great way to keep track of who you’ve seated and where they’re seated. It’s also great because you can rename each table. We’re doing cities that we’ve traveled to, and it really helps us create a fun theme. For example, Mr. P lived in China for a number of years, and his buddies coming to the wedding will be sitting at the Beijing table!!!

It took me about 45 minutes to configure everything and then print to PDF. Then, we sent it to the ‘rents for a final vetting. And, done! It was a snap and so easy and intuitive, I went ahead and did a chart in about 20 minutes for the rehearsal dinner.

This thing is a life saver. I highly recommend it!