Am I mad for considering OH's idea?!

I like it, I don't particularly want to draw up a seating plan but there are people coming to my wedding that pretty much everyone would avoid having to sit next to. Even my FIL would use it as an excuse not to have to sit next to my Step-MIL!

The trouble with doing that is you might find all your family sit on one table and all of OH's family sit on another. People might group themselves off. Whereas the idea to me is to have a seating plan to mix the our families and make them have no choice but to talk ?

We didn't really have a plan. We had all round tables, designated one for ourselves and our parents, a second for OH's brothers and my best friend, and all their partners. The remaining tables were free seating, and no-one had any problems. Worked really well. I think you can usually rely on adults to be sensible enough to organise themselves, and swap around if people aren't sitting with who they want. For a formal meal, I can see the point of seating plans, but not for a more relaxed buffet / hog roast etc.

Haha! Oh dear, icklefee. Luckily I think in our families the people who are best seated apart KNOW they need to be apart, so hopefully we wouldn't have any issues there. I dunno, I just think it fits OHs disorganised attitude, lol! But then I can see it peeing me off on the day, because I'll be worried about everything :/ On another note, this is the first actual solid input / idea OH has given me re the wedding, so I don't want to just reject it out of hand...

Ah you see leopardcat, there's no way I could mix up our families- Id get an earful and they prbably wouldnt follow my plan anyway! Neither of our families are that laid back!

Barefoot, I think thats a fab idea, although I dont know if id even bother designating our parents tables- as there are three sets with their own kids, tbh I think youre right, I think theyd just naturally organise themselves. Did you have a sweetheart table for you and your hubby, then?

EDIT- Sorry, ignore that q, I just re-read your post correctly!

I tend to find any input or ideas my OH has we tend to run with them just so he feels involved!

I'm actually looking forward to doing the seating plan now. I'm getting revenge for SIL sitting H2B and I at different tables at her wedding by putting her beside the aforementioned Step-MIL ?

Personally I feel if you have any level of tables with place settings i.e cutlery glasses etc laid up I feel you need a table plan to avoid the chaos of people wanting to sit with each other and not being able to.

e.g a family of 5 sits at a table, a couple join their table that leaves you one odd seat, if that happens a few times you end up with a few odd people having to sit with people they might not know can leave some guests feeling like a spare part.

If on the other hand your buffet is finger fayre that where people would just graze and maybe not even have to sit down to eat the no seating plan could work well.

We're not having a plan, but we're having long trestle tables so the numbers of seating hopefully won't be an issue. We figured that we'd just end up putting people with who they'd want to sit next to, and they're quite capable of doing that themselves!

Hmmm, I really dont know :/ More opinions, please?

Genius, and also the norm in Asian weddings so it's a tried and tested method