Reception Seating Charts: Pros & Cons

One pretty frequent question we get asked is about seating charts - are they worth the hassle? My personal opinion: 

NO

While seating charts do have a place, I personally am not a huge fan of seating charts. Here are a few pros & cons of taking the time to come up with a formal seating chart for your reception: 

Pros: 

• They give an extra sense of formality than open seating. 

• They can help with avoiding family drama if there are people who cannot stand to be on the same side of the room as each other. 

• If you are going to be pushing maximum capacity, it can definitely help with making sure each table is filled properly (helps to avoid having 4 tables of 6 with 4 seats at each unoccupied).

Cons:

• They take an immense amount of time and effort to put together all for the hour, maybe hour and a half, that people will actually be sitting at the table.

• They often cause a bottleneck effect while people are looking for their table numbers before they can even enter the reception hall. 

• I have seen many weddings with frantic rearranging of tables & place cards due to guests backing out at the last minute. 

• They can lead to awkwardness if guests are placed next to people they don’t know or are placed at a “less desirable” table and feel like they should be at a more “important” table. 

This is all just my personal opinion based on what I have seen over the years! Ultimately, YOU get to decide how you want your wedding & reception to go! :)