Seating Chart - Pros and Cons

@Emily my family and fh aren't really strangers. It's strange to me that people at your wedding would be total strangers to each other. I mean they at some point have met each other if only in passing way before your wedding right? Every one coming is close to us, so I doubt they are all really strangers to each other. My whole point in doing it is, to let people get to know each other more. Let my friends get to know my sil friends better and so forth. Because even at the cocktail hour I bet people will only chitchat with people they really, really know. Hopefully that's not the case.

I have really enjoyed reading this! Yall have presented many perspectives that I may or may not have considered. Thanks!!

I think my main concern is that my reception is in a non-traditional space being that it is a restaurant rooftop. It is kinda shaped like a tetris piece with a bar in the middle. The tables are not all in one area.

Maybe it would help to put a few "reserved" labels on the tables like Bride's Family/Groom's Family/Bridal Party??

@beachbride Is it a plated meal? A buffet? or Just apps? We are doing assigned tables but before we decided to do that we were going to do at least reserved seating for my parents, his parents, the bridal party and us (we are doing a harvest table for wedding party and their families).

For a very casual, laid back, small wedding or a cocktail party evening, you don't need them. But usually you do, and i know it's amazingly annoying to put them together, but your guests expect it.

I'm assigning tables. I've spent hours ensuring that everyone is happy, comfortable and sitting by people they want to sit with.

Guest can't just plop themselves in an ideal seating arrangement without assigned seating.

@Northern - It is a buffet. Over half the guests are bridal party/family. I am leaning towards some form of reserved seating.

Yes, Celia...something about it is super annoying!! ha! maybe just annoying cause I feel like it should work it's self out or annoying because I want some else to decide who sits by who!!

But, I certainly don't want guests to feel uncomfortable!!

@Beachbride I hear ya! Not only am I a bit annoyed to do it...my mom is annoyed that I am doing it. haha...doesn't think it is needed.

On the note of making it easier...Did anyone use the WW seating webpage? How was it? Any suggestions of other apps for doing table assignment but not seating assignment that worked well for you?

Oh, goodness. Seating people with people they don't know well to force them to mingle? That makes me think of corporate team-building "mandatory fun" exercises.

Weddings are reunions, not forced mixers. Yes, I want to see the couple get married, but a wedding is also one of the few times old friends and the whole family gets together. That's really exciting for guests. So while I'm happy to chat with Groom's Third Cousin Susan during cocktail hour, I don't necessarily want to have dinner with her. What would really thrill me is to sit with my College Buddy Cameron, who I haven't seen in two years, so we can catch up.

The purpose of a seating chart is to be courteous to your guests, not to shoehorn them into what might be awkward social situations. Yikes.

As for seating charts in general, do them. I went to a wedding that didn't have one, and it was SO AWKWARD. DH and I had to circle the room over and over to find two seats together, with basically every table saying they had nowhere for us to sit. Throw in a donkey and some labor pains, and you've got Mary and Joseph on Christmas Eve. We also wound up sitting with total randoms, even though a close childhood friend and his partner were there, and we would have loved to be seated with them. We didn't feel like the couple made an effort to make us comfortable, so we left early.