Seat Assignments - Necessary or Not?

For me I think both sides of the family should talk instead of being separated. The parents of the bride and groom should sit together though

Necessary!

Yes! This is absolutely a necessity! As a guest, an unassigned reception would make me feel super awkward, especially if I didn't know many people at the wedding. It's just a better guest experience, in my opinion.

Totally necessary.

We wanted to make sure that families were together, but also to sit people with friends... and given that free-for-alls often mean that tables end up lopsided, it made more sense to create a seating chart.

Thankfully, DH was very excited about doing this, and only occasionally asked for my input.

Not necessary, I went to my co-worker's wedding and she had seating arrangements and of course she put people next to other people that dont get along so I want my guest to mingle seat where every you please

They were necessary for me as well because i had to put their meal choice with their assigned seat.

in general, necessary if you have multiple tables. if you do 2 or 3 long tables for everyone it think its fine. but if you sit 8-10 at one table they are necessary.

It’s mainly only necessary for a plated meal as staff will need to know who picked what meal. Table assignments are important because it ensures everyone will have a seat and will be able to sit next to their loved one. Otherwise people sit wherever they want and leave only 1 seat between people and it becomes a big mess. Necessary.

At the ceremony we are having no seat assignments. At dinner though I am still wondering about this. We are going to sit with our guests, no separate bride/groom table. I just attended a wedding where the bride/groom/wedding party table was 10 feet from everyone else. How do you socialize when your that far away? We don't want to be separated from our family and friends. A lot of them we haven't see in a long time. But I think we will have our table assigned if possible because we would like to sit with our wedding party. But the table will be grouped with everyone else.

Just pick a seat.

Wow, after reading everyone else's comments, sounds like this is a good idea. I was going to do it anyway for people to get to know the others at the reception and we will all be family in some kind of way. So ALL FOR IT!!!

Depends on the size of the wedding. I was really unhappy to be a bridesmaid in a very large wedding, arrive to the reception, and had no assigned seat. I had no idea where the 3 other guests I knew were already sitting, and ended up being a rando at a table of her extended family. NOT COOL after spending at least $1000 to be a bridesmaid.


Ours will be ~50 guests, and I haven't decided yet if we should do assignments since it will be 2 long tables. Simple place cards might be nice to make it easy and make sure family doesn't get split up...

I think table assignments are necessary, but dictating the exact seat is unnecessary.

If you're doing a plated meal, you will need seat arrangements. I'd also recommend it because you want to be sure that your parents and most immediate family members are close to the action.

That being said, I'm assigning tables, not places at the table. People start to do this round robin thing looking for their name cards.

Not necessary and my guests kept saying how much they enjoyed finally going to a wedding where they chose their own seat. For reference we had 125 people and enough tables and chairs to seat 145. There were zero issues. I don't think they are necessary at all.

Definitely necessary! I went to a wedding recently that did not have assigned seating and say at least three people wondering around for a while trying to find a place to sit! There were these random single chairs between groups of people that would have no one sitting in them, and no one wanted to sit in them because the single person looking for a seat (or three people) wanted to sit with the people they knew. It wasn't good!

Yes! I don’t want my family coming in sitting in the back because people have decided where they want to sit! It’s not good etiquette

Yes! It helps take the pressure off of guests trying not to split up their families at different tables and avoids a lot of seats being left open. It isn't actually that much work if you know your guests well. The only exception is if you have like 10 wedding guests because they would be able to figure it out themselves.

Thats an iffy subject. I am doing it because some guests are more comfortable with their families, and some of my families are at odds with eachother. So I take the precaution to prevent D.R.A.M.A

I think it is necessary because if you have guests that may not necessarily know each other then they can people of similar age close by.

Probably neccessary considering we over invited by 45. 🤷‍♀️