Why Are Wedding Seating Arrangements So Important?

I just finished doing our wedding seating arrangements and while doing them, realized exactly how important they are, even though we're having a buffet reception dinner. Now, if you're having a rather informal, casual setting, like an outdoor garden wedding, you may not need wedding reception seating with table number cards. But if you're having an indoor, seated affair with a specific number of seats at each table, then wedding seating arrangements is a Must Do on your list for several reasons.

First, not all of your guests are going to know who all else was invited or is going to attend. Without seating arrangements some of your guests may want to try to "save a seat" for someone else who they think may be coming and then ultimately doesn't show up at all. Or you may have some guests arriving late and find that they have to split up their party because there aren't enough seats at one table for them.

wedding-reception-seating Second, some of your guests may arrive at the reception in parties of three or five and some may attend alone. And you're always bound to have some guests who are very uncomfortable sitting with a table full of other people that they don't know. In fact, one of our relatives actually requested to be seated with close friends of theirs.

Also, you want to reduce the confusion for your guests when they arrive. You don't want your guests to have to go from table to table asking, 'Is this seat taken?' Keep the confusion and stress to an absolute minimum when it comes to where they sit. Keep it orderly and relaxed by showing your guests where they're supposed to sit and you'll be less stressed too.

How do you figure out who sits with whom?
If you have a rather large guest list where a lot of people from one side of the family haven't met the other side of the family, it could get a little tricky so you can try to sit them by age, personality, similar interests or occupation, whatever makes the best sense to you. Obviously you want all of your guests to have a good time and if they're seated with people that they can find something common to talk about, that makes it much better for everyone.

My guests haven't sent back their RSVPs yet? Where do I seat them?
While your wedding seating arrangements depend mostly on who is going to be there, sometimes people just forget, even if they've been sent Save the Date cards well ahead of time. And unfortunately, it's out of your control.

So, you will have to call them, email them, Facebook message them, email a family member of theirs, etc., whatever is the easiest and fastest way to get a response from them. You should explain that you're not trying to "nag," and you appreciate that they're busy and it's probably just an oversight, but that for wedding seating arrangements and the head count for the caterer, you really need to know if they're planning to attend and how many will be in their party.

In the meantime, while you're waiting for their answer, you can still go ahead and set up your seating arrangements "as though" these people are coming. If you're doing your seating in a software program, simply highlight these people in red or yellow so you know they haven't responded yet, but that you want to make sure that if they do attend, they have a seat.

If they end up not attending, no loss, no harm done, you just have an extra seat available if someone else shows up that you didn't know was coming, like the unexpected date of an invited guest; these things happen so you just deal with it, or people just decide to move around during the reception.

The bottom line is wedding seating arrangements will keep your guests feeling as comfortable and relaxed as possible from the time they walk in the door.

And after all, you know where you're going to be seated; your guests should know too.

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