Creating the perfect seating plan for your wedding can be a really tough challenge. Before you start tearing your hair out, when deciding who should sit where, keep the big picture in mind and use common sense. For instance, it might not be wise to sit your alcoholic uncle right next to the bar. And your grandmother probably won’t be very comfortable right in front of the DJ’s booth and speakers. If you’re looking for a few simple tips on where to start with your seating plan try thinking about the following:

Try seating kids around a table with their parents or on their own with entertainment

• Seat families with small children at tables with easy access to the toilets
• If the dance floor cuts the room in half, seat guests of both the bride and groom on each side to encourage mingling
• Whenever possible, seat guests in a male-female-male pattern around each table

Try seating guests boy, girl, boy girl Image: Gitter weddings

The first few tables are often easy to pull together, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are often a simple choice to seat together. It gets tougher when you’re faced with friends of the bride and grooms friends who may never have met before. Make sure you seat couples that have arrived together on the same table, but in my opinion try to steer clear of ‘singles only’ tables – they can leave guests feeling outcast. If possible, try to sit single guests with a few of their friends and then some married couple of around the same age.

Try to sit friends together but have a good mix around any tables with singles on them

If you have a group of say 10 friends from university to seat around two tables of 10, split them evenly and then consider putting two sets of couples who have met before on the table with them. It’s important to think about personality, interest and age when you’re putting together a table of strangers who don’t know each other.

Give yourself plenty of time to sort wedding seating arrangements

Luckily the smallest and most informal wedding receptions don’t need ordered seating arrangements of any kind, but for larger and more formal receptions, you do need to provide some order if you’d like to avoid the chaos of 300 people trying to choose their own seats!