Wedding Table Plan Tips

Wedding table plans can play a big role in planning for your wedding reception.  Unlike organising your wedding invitations, guest books and photo albums, wedding table plans call for real strategy!

It is very important that you try to utilise all of the floor space available while placing people for your wedding reception.  Once you have received all of the responses from your wedding invites, you will know exactly who is coming and how many guests you have overall.  Based on the overall number of confirmed guests, you need to decide how many you want to sit at each table.  This does half the work for you as it then determines how many tables you will have.  Once you have the total number of tables, you can work out how you want them situated around the room – your reception venue staff should be able to advise you on the best way to do this and give you various options.

Start allocating people to tables, with the wedding party being at the top of your list.  Once your top table is sorted, you can then move onto other immediate family who will be attending your wedding.  Once immediate family are sorted, move onto close friends.  You may choose to sit all friends together or mix them in with family, depending on who knows who.  Alternatively you may choose an ‘Ice Breaking’ seating plan where you sit together people who have never met, but make sure you sit some very chatty people on these tables otherwise nobody will talk!  Lastly, seat all other guests including distant relatives and people who may have come alone or brought a date, but don’t know anyone else at the wedding. Seating these guests together will allow them to get to know each other so they don’t feel like the only odd ones out.  It goes without saying that you should avoid seating people together who don’t get along well.

It is always a good idea to seat families together, even if they include young children.  A children’s table is not always the best idea as small children may need help from their parents during meal time. Separating them means the parents will be up and down instead of relaxing and enjoying the occasion.  On the other hand, a teenagers table can be a great idea.