Guests sitting at tables during the ceremony?

I went to a wedding like this and it was fine!

I don't particularly like sitting at a table for the ceremony primarily because the tables take up so much space causing the guests to be seated further and further away from where the couple is saying their vows.

As for flipping the room, I've never seen a true, experienced venue that wasn't able to flip the room in an hour.

We have a lot of venues where this is really the only alternative, but a room flip IS possible in 15 minutes or so if the staff of your chosen caterer is experienced. Usually the tables will be all set and just need to be moved into place and chairs moved around. And don't forget; it will take a few minutes for your guests to get from their ceremony seat to outside too.

I've never heard that referred to as "European style"....that's pretty inventive....

The only thing that seems difficult is to actually get people to get up and mingle after they're seated at their dinner seat.

My preference would be to have your original plan; unless you have 400 guests, a cocktail hour plus a few is plenty of time to flip a room.

One thing you could do is this; after the ceremony (if they're at their tables) have your officiant announce that you would like all the guests to gather around you and take a photo. It gets them up, it sucks up a few minutes (if you need that) and it's a great photo!

I have thought about this for our rain plan too. I dont think i would mind having guests seated at their tables. Granted, we only have 50 guests and our venue can hold ovet 100 so space is not an issue

I let go of my dream venue because they were trying to force us to do this. Pros can flip the room on NO. TIME. Don't stress about this.

We ended up having to go this route due to our rain plan. It was fine. The venue staff set up a couple rows of chairs up front for our immediate family and the rest of the guests sat at the tables.

If it is really stressing you out, then maybe just don't post a schedule. That way if cocktail hour runs a few minutes long, no one will know. We had an extended cocktail hour and so far no one has complained to me about it or even mentioned it. I agree that I would prefer normal seating to being seated at tables. Tables will look sloppy since some guests will have their back to the arch and will need to pull their chairs far away from the table to make it work

We are doing the ceremony in a completely separate location and outdoors, but in the case of inclement weather (it is July so that could either mean a thunder storm which do happen often in summer afternoons here, or a heat wave of over 100 degrees which would be unsafe), we are going to have the ceremony indoors at the reception site. Because it will be something that will need to be executed with little planning and last minute, I don't think they will be able to flip the space so likely we would just have them sit at the tables unless the coordinator or caterers think they can pull off setting it up differently for the ceremony on short notice and flipping it. We decided that people sitting at their tables wouldn't be the end of the world though and probably just fine.

@Celia great idea. It would be awesome to have a picture with everyone that attended the wedding.

We will have this issue, it's our weather back up plan too! Our venue holds 225 and we are inviting 150 so I don't think space will be our issue as far as fitting chairs to set up like a ceremony rather than them sitting at tables. I've only been to one wedding where this happened and unfortunately people still sat at tables rather than chairs because the room was essentially split in half. They also didn't have enough chairs for how many people came. Not sure if they underestimate or if a lot of "No" rsvps showed up anyway. Regardless it was fine. People sat at their tables for cocktail hour while the chairs were taken away and made space for the dance floor. It was a boring wedding but for more reasons than just that.

Serena Williams did it for her ceremony...not round tables...but still very different and you could probably pull it off!

I've been to 2 weddings that did that. The first was a small wedding with round tables that was in the BP for and the second was a big wedding with long straight tables. It was fine, I didn't have anything against either one of them. I think the nicest thing about it was that everyone was able to get up and get food immediately after the ceremony.

We are having them sit at the tables. for the room flip, it would be an hour and guests could use the OPEN RESTAURANT ON SITE like 100 people are gunna cram up to the bar and pay for their own drinks? hell no. I'd rather people think it's weird to sit at the table for 20 mins than feel displaced later.

We did this. It rained during our ceremony (but not during the reception) and so everyone just sat at the tables during the ceremony. I guess my dad had them open the bar early so people were able to drink before and during the ceremony. Our guests loved it (I heard afterwards)

We were given the same option but did the room flip. They had the room changed in under 30 minutes. We didn't have any issue with the vendors not being ready or having it completed on time. We didn't want people to sit at tables during the ceremony as some people would their backs to the front.

My sister did this, and the "aisle" snaked thru all the tables so everyone could see, with the ceremony on the dance floor. No problems and all had a good time. Also, this is my backup plan in case of bad weather for my outdoor ceremony at the same venue. I see no issues with it.

So happy reading this post and all these comments, as I have been struggling with the same decision! Friends have told me guests sitting at the table during the ceremony are fine and now I'm convinced!

We had our guests sit at tables, but we only had 52 guests so no one was far away.

We got our guests up and mingling by having cocktail hour (time for us to do pictures) in the lobby area of our ballroom. There was also a selfie station, guest book and other things in the lobby to keep them entertained.