Seating chart planning

We put people in groups that they naturally fell in and then if we had a group of like 2 or 3 we looked at what tables weren’t full with an established group and stuck them where they would fit in best. So like a few of my husbands friends that didn’t fit in with an established large group we stuck with his cousins that were around the same age etc.

I'm considering making some of our tables of 8 into tables of 7 and 9. Idk if that will work.

Well one thing we did was make no attempt to keep our tables uniform. We had tables of 8, 9 and 10. The difference wasn’t noticeable. So like, our friend group of let’s just say 16 people, instead of filling one table and moving 6 to another table and filling that with 4 other random people, we split the group 8 and 8. Of course that’s still not seamless but to divide the group but we tried to reason through it amongst the friend group as best we could (especially considering relationship status: single, with someone who is part of the group, with someone who doesn’t know the group, formerly with someone within the group (haha), etc)

I totally get what you mean. It was hard because for instance the people you felt would go together don't necessarily fill the entire table either.

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That's definitely a good plan. We have a couple like that that were able to make it to 7 or 8 total, we might need to break the groups back apart and reconfigure.

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I think it would. Some naturally are going to be on one end of the spectrum or the other. Especially when you think about people who have to be together (couples, parents etc). You can have your coordinator have a seating plan so they know which table has however many chairs at it. The reason we can't do that is because we're really squeezing into the room space-wise, so we need to limit our # of tables

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Makes sense! We were surprised that our friends (not in wedding party) don't fill up 3 full tables. We are thinking of different combos of our friends that would make sense. The bigger parties for us that we're dividing are family, which gets tricky when it comes to age, you don't want to "insult" someone by putting them as the only baby boomer couple with the teenage cousins, even if they are all related.

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Exactly! And sometimes they fill more than a table. How did y'all make it work?

View Quoted Comment Haha this was my problem with first cousins— I had three tables worth on my mom’s side. We’re all cousins but range in age from 21-49 , some live locally, some live far away , many are siblings etc. So at first I tried to group them by age, and that made me pause because then three siblings from out of town (can see eachother often) would be at one table. I literally ended up drawing names out of a hat to choose the tables 🤣🤣🤣

Ugg...yes, I'm so not looking forward to actually making the seating chart. I've done a mockup with all the people I expect to attend, and we definitely have some weird gaps we'll have to fill somehow. My biggest issue is that my parents are divorced, and although they're civil and my mom said she and her boyfriend would be fine sitting at a table with my dad and his wife, I think everyone will be happier and less awkward if they're separate. But then I'd feel bad putting FH's parents with one of my parents because it feels like playing favorites, so that makes 3 parent tables, and I'm not sure we'll have enough people in that age group to fill them. It'll be interesting for sure...I expect to spend a lot of time rearranging the chart.