Figuring Out Seating Arrangements…With Post-it Notes!
By jackieandtom | posted on August 16, 2012 at 9:14am
Anyone I’ve ever talked to that is planning/has planned a wedding will say, “Table seating arrangements is the hardest part about planning a wedding!” I would say I disagree and this is why….
Don’t stress ladies! If you are organized and have some type of spread sheet or list (I used excel) with all the guests names, the beginning process isn’t too difficult. I started by getting a giant piece of foam board and post-it notes. I wrote every single guest name on a different post-it and stuck them randomly all on the board. I made circular cut outs using construction paper to signify the tables and taped those to the foam board. I am a very visual person, so this helped me start to map the room out.
I started putting the “obvious” tables together like immediate family, aunts and uncles, and cousins. Once those were set I was able to move on to begin to place friends and family together. I tried to not be afraid about mixing family and friends. Some of the tables I think will have the most fun are actually a mix of people that don’t know one another. Let’s hope I’m right! 
The nice thing about using the post-it notes was that I could move them around as many times as I wanted without accidentally deleting anyone from the mix or having to rewrite something ten times. It was like figuring out a maze or putting together a puzzle and the post its added a little fun factor. When a table was full and I knew for sure I didn’t want to add/move/change anyone from it, I would put a yellow post-it in the middle of the table so I knew not to waste time looking at it. Once I had everyone seated, I was able to pick up and move the actual tables around on the board to make sure tables of family are by family and tables of friends are by friends, etc.
There are a still a few people in question about where to put them and amazingly enough there are still some guests who I still don’t know if they are coming or not. Just yesterday I had someone cancel who, RSVP’d yes because something came up. So my advice is to (insert Borat voice here) NOT (end Borat voice here) jump the gun making the seating cards. I’d rather have people cancel and be unsure before I make the cards, rather than having to rearrange everyone at the last minute and have to re-make 30 seating cards and waste a bunch of time and paper…and we all know how I feel about wasting paper. Not cool.
I’m not going to fib and say making the seating arrangements was a piece of cake, but I can honestly say it wasn’t the hardest part of planning a wedding. I actually had some fun moving people around and figuring out who everyone would have the best time sitting with.
