How to work with uneven reception seating

I don’t think it would be tacky to have an extra seat here and there in order to keep couples, families, etc. together at a table. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice the uneven numbers. Plus, once you get all your RSVPs back, you may not even have to worry about it! 😀

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having uneven tables. We aimed for 8 per table, but wound up with 7 at some and 9 at others.

We had a few uneven numbers as well. Also, you have so much time before your wedding, this is really not something I would stress myself over right now before getting RSVPs in. You will end up having to to-do the whole thing anyway once you get declines, and if you have gaps now, they'll more than likely be more apparent once you get some declines. When we did it, it took us maybe an hour. I wrote every couple on index cards and then grouped them together by groups based on who they knew, and then broke it down like that.

Yes, that is completely fine. We had 2 tables that were uneven due to wanted to keep certain families together.

View Quoted Comment That is true. It’s hard to find the balance between getting ahead in your wedding planning, because the more you do now the less you have to do later, and not letting yourself get overwhelmed, especially so early in the process. Right now, we’re only planning seating for people we know for a fact will RSVP that they’re attending, like close family and wedding party members. I just wanted to ask this question while it was on my mind.

The guests' 60" tables at daughter's wedding best fit a maximum of 8 guests. They were pretty evenly split between having 7 or 8 guests, and one table only had six. We really struggled with the two parents' tables -- the groupings would be best if we could do 10 at each. We asked the venue and they had a couple of 72" tables that can comfortably seat 10, so daughter had two of those and the remaining tables were 60". It worked perfectly, and I'm sure no one noticed there were two larger tables.... The venue should set up each table with the appropriate number of place settings and chairs, so no matter how many guests are sitting at a table it will look "full."

I also agree it isn't worth spending too much energy on this until much closer to the wedding. Once you know for sure who is coming, it really only takes 30-60 minutes max to figure out the groupings. Daughter did it in a Google doc and just played with the groupings until they were pretty well balanced.

I don't think anyone will notice. We had a couple tables that were off by one person in order to group certain people together

We had uneven seating at our reception. We just made sure our venue / caterer had an accurate count for each table.

This is standard.

We had one table seat 10 - for DH's family, and then a bunch of tables that were made for 8, but could be rearranged to sit less.

I would recommend against doing even seating for the sake of even seating. It is the epitome of awkward if you are the guest that makes it even and now are sitting at a table of people who might not know. My sisters wedding due to how the venue was and how small the tables were (5 max but 4 comfortable) and the fact there were a bunch of no shows some tables had 4 some had 3. It was fine. Seating with people they could talk to was more important.

We had uneven tables at our reception. I made our seating chart way ahead of time, so I ended up making about 15 different ones lol.

We had tables that seated 10, but we had some that only had 8 or 9 and one that had 7. I think most had 10, but I don’t think anyone noticed how many settings were at each table! Totally normal.