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I’m not talking about a place to park our cars; Bartram’s Garden comes with a big and safe parking lot. I’m talking about a place to park our asses. I’m talking about chairs.
Our caterer will be providing our chairs, and the chairs that come with our package are plain white folding chairs that look like this:
Our ceremony is going to be short and sweet. Sometime this month when I get around to it, I’ll try to read it out and time it to about 10 minutes. We plan on having our guests stand surrounding us in a semi-circle, however, we’d like to have a couple of rows for our elderly guests or those who have difficulty standing for that long. We can’t afford to rent chairs, and we toyed with the idea of bringing in mismatched chairs. I’d die if we could find enough pews (I own one, but it’s having an extended stay at a friend’s house), but it seems benches and pews won’t happen either. So what’s a girl with nearly empty pockets to do?
Okay, so this is admittedly random, but it’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, so all of you get to hear about it! I can not figure out who Mr. Knitting and I should sit with for dinner at the wedding. I realize at six months out this is maybe a bit early to be thinking about it, but here I am.
It basically comes down to I have issues with every possible configuration. Here they are:
1) Sitting with the wedding party. I suspect this would be the most fun for Mr. K and I, but I’m not really in love with splitting up couples. I realize it’s just for the duration of dinner and that certainly none of our wedding party would be upset about this, but I just think they might all have more fun if they could sit with their dates.
2) Sitting with our wedding party and their dates. That would basically be the longest head table ever, and probably not much fun for anyone.
3) Sitting with our families. Despite us being together for six years, our families, while friendly with each other, barely know each other. I think everyone would have a lot more fun with their own people.
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We’ve got some time before putting together our table assignments, but looking back to past weddings, I started thinking about the different ways to set up the tables. Everyone has different ideas on how guests should be seated. It typically comes down to whether or not you will have assigned seating. But when you plan to assign guests to specific tables, there are still quite a few possibilities.
Groups who know each other- This is the most common way to assign your guests. It makes sense to put people who know each other together. It makes the guests feel comfortable and lets them have fun. It’s especially great to put people together who know each other, but may not see each other too often, this way they can catch up. Personally, this is my favorite arrangement. I like being able to hang out with friends and family members at other people’s weddings.
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The second X-Acto knife intensive project I recently completed was a sign that will go on the escort card table, showing guests where to find their table on the deck.
If you remember from my crazy Photoshop post, the layout of our reception will look very much like this, with the escort card table on the grass next to the two level deck:
At the suggestion of our DOC, I not only will number our tables in order of table placement (not in order of who’s more important and sitting at that table), but I also made a diagram to put on the table, so people can look at their table assignment, then look at the diagram to see where to find their table.
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Before I tell you about our centerpieces, let’s talk tables. The round table is, by far, the most popular table used at weddings, that much we know. What we don’t know is that, for whatever reason, multiple round tables totally throw off my chi. They disalign my chakra. They muddle my mojo.
Anyway, that option was instantly nixed, and it was on to the rectangle table. Now this is my kinda table. Clean lines, not too busy… that’s definitely a good thing. Since we’ll be having such a small wedding, we’ll have 6 8’ banquet tables. 3 end-to-end on one side of the dance floor, and 3 end-to-end on the other side, with us at a round table in the center. Like this:
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
This was definitely one of the thousands of things I learn by stalking Weddingbee. Since I’ve attended only two weddings in my life and both of them had someone guiding me to my seat, I had absolutely no idea what a seating chart was until a few months ago.
Now that I’ve been drawn into the wedding waters, I’ve found so many cool/fun seating ideas that I had to share my favorites.
This first one was one of the ones I liked the most, because we wanted to give our guests a tiny bottle of Pisco as a our wedding favors. That way we could share with them a traditional liquor from Chile. But since we want to offer the Pisco Sour at the reception, giving them more Pisco might be too much. I love the idea of mixing the favor with the card, though. 
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A few weeks ago, I finished our seating charts. We had all the RSVPs in, and I really wanted to get this task out of the way. It took a little while, but I finished it and was actually proud of some of the table assignments I put together.
A week later, there was a change. Our friends broke up, and this meant that we either needed to move someone to another table, or we’d have one less guest at the wedding. Since it was just one minor change, I decided to sit on changing the tables until the broken up couple told me for sure what was going on.
Fast-forward 2 more weeks, and we suddenly had another change. My very first RSVPer can’t make it to the wedding. That’s 2 more spots to account for. Actually, the absence of these 2 people throw off the entire dynamic of the table. Now, I may have to rethink the table.
Looking back, I can’t decided whether I should have waited until the last minute to do the table assignments, or if was a good thing I did them. Hopefully, the changes won’t take us very long to sort out.
Did you find that there were some wedding tasks that were better left to the last minute? What were they?
… Ms. Joey will attempt a difficult task — the seating arrangements.
At first Mr. Joey and I weren’t going to do assigned seats. The lunch is a buffet, so it wasn’t like servers needed to know who sat where. We changed our minds when we started looking at the guest list. It’s a pretty random assortment of people from all phases of our lives, together and apart.
We decided on assigned seats because A) we have 4 different size tables that seat anywhere between 4-10 people, and B) We will have random people at the wedding who aren’t going to know anyone.
We don’t want a group of 6 to take the table for 8 and then have a random couple have to sit there, because there isn’t room for both of them elsewhere. We also want people to mingle. We don’t want my side of the family to sit on the right side of the dance floor and Mr. Joey’s family sitting on the left. They don’t necessarily have the sit together at tables, but maybe every other table could be my family or his.
The seating chart seemed doable. I got through 2 of the big tables painlessly and then I got stuck. Who sits with whom? What about the random single person at the table? I don’t want a singles table, but I don’t want a single person stuck at a table of just couples.
I thought about just randomly selecting people - just throwing names into a hat and filling tables - but then thought again.
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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.
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Are you frustrated with your seating chart? Is the endless seating “politics” driving you crazy? Are all of your erasers completely gone from writing and re-writing names? Do you fantasize about covering it in kerosene, lighting a match, and tossing it out the window in a flaming ball of firey glory?!
Put down the matches, my friend. I am about to be your saving grace. Well, Martha and I are, to be exact.
In recent months, Martha Stewart Weddings has gotten a major overhaul. There are now wedding planning tools available for your use, one of which in particular- the seating chart tool - is named, descriptively, “My Seating.”
My Seating is not your average seating-chart tool. Oh no dear one; My Seating has a drag and drop tool feature that allows you to physically take a little person from your list and drop them onto a little table that is sized to your specifications. Genius!
This past weekend, Mr. Deviled Egg and I met with Frank, our catering manager to discuss some details of the reception. One topic that came up was our seating arrangements. With a wedding party of about 10 adults, three children and a bride and groom, I want to be sure that everyone has a comfortable place to sit for dinner.
At our venue, a long banquet table would take up a lot of room and possibly push some guests into the mezzanine level for dinner seating. I really want to avoid this at all costs, so I asked about round tables for our wedding party.
According to Frank, this would allow for more seating on the lower level, but would require our dance floor area to be pushed from the center of the room to one side. Frank also suggested using a sweetheart table for Mr. DE and I.
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 by 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. Shortcake and I aren’t the most regular of folks. In any given moment, either one or both of us will be making faces, speaking in cartoon voices, and generally being rather ridiculous. 
I’m particularly prone to breaking out into spontaneous song and dance routines in public. We can’t help it - we’re just silly people! Our wedding, as elegant and beautiful as some parts of it may be, is definitely going to reflect that quirky aspect of our relationship. Our cake topper isn’t the most chic and minimalist one out there. Our first dance routine (a surprise!) is definitely over-the-top something (remember, it’s a surprise! No adjectives allowed!). Our centerpieces (which I may or may not get a chance to blog about) are definitely whimsical.
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I have been using Perfect Table Plan to keep track of our RSVP’s and I have been loving it. I was able to import our guest list and keep track of their responses with ease. Meal choices, guests, and “who invited them?!” were all included in the handy chart. When it finally came time to start seating people, things got a little trickier. Being able to drag and drop was nice enough and the auto-assign function was a great start. Maybe it was the size of our room or our long rather than round tables, but I was starting to get frustrated.
I fell back on some skills that I picked up when I planned non-profit fundraisers. Who was sitting with whom was very important and the guest list was changing all the time. The easiest way to plan it out was a big piece of poster board and a post-it note for every guest. I would then hang it up in my cubicle and stare at it until I found the perfect arrangement. Fortunately, I spent the weekend up at the lake rather than in my cubicle, but the trick worked just the same.
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