Table Plans, the easy way to organise them?

I love how Monica did it on Friends with the pins. I'm so gonna do that!

I'm not an OM but I'm doing mine on excel, that way I can change/ swap things around without too much fuss

My OH did ours on the ipad so that we could swap and change before printing

Thats a good idea! im gonna steal that! lol!! congrats on your wedding hope all went well xxx

We cut out slips of paper and used blu-tack to stick them around our tables.

Another option is to tell people they are on say table 1, but let them sit where they like on the actual table.

I did it the old way with paper, pencil & eraser. I only had 60 guests and not many changes so it was the easiest way for me.

Excel spreadsheet with tables listed, and a diagram to the side which numbered the seats like a clock face. On our lists, we numbered people from 1-12 (like a clock, 12 sits opposite 6) and that dictated where they sat / faced i.e. distant relatives had their back to us, close family sat facing us.

I had an excel sheet with all the names and then scrolled down the list and numbered everyone as I thought appropriate. Then once everyone had a number I sorted the listed into number order so could see easily who was with who and could swap people about easily.

I wrote down people's names in groups of who knew each other, circles of friends, then just put them in tables of 10,11,12 etc.

Write names on post-it notes - then you can shuffle them around many times till you get it right.

We did the "allocated tables but sit where you want" thing simply because we were tight on space, and if too many singles and couples had sat in the wrong places the few large family groups we had wouldn't have been able to sit together.

This was also for evening guests, as we had our speeches during the evening reception rather than the meal.

We're using some free software that you can allocate and move people around as necessary. I think the one we have is the martha stewart one where you just log into the website and do it all through there.

I figured the whole plan out in 15 mins on a piece of paper with a penci and a rubber- perfect!

And now I can't find it and have a funny feeling OH may have been tidying and it's been chucked- I would go for a computer option- can be saved that way!

I was just going to recommend Martha Stewart - the software on the website is brilliant and made it much easier for us to give a copy of the plan to our venue, who obviously need it for setting out the tables, knowing where the vegetarian meals are meant to go etc. I found it a really good way to manage our guest list too.

The Martha Stewart one is alright - does a job. We had found a great one that does loads of stuff, but realised it was a knock off version and we would have had to pay £10 for the full version so we could save/print etc.

As a free one its pretty good, but there are all-singing-all-dancing ones for a small fee

I used zankyou for my RSVPs and as a wedding site. They have this function on there. It is amazing! You can move people easily then just print it out for the venue to use

THIS!!

also, guest list is changing all the time (mainly additions lol) so am using this as a base and not removing people just drawing aline through a name

Just been and registered with the Martha Stewart website and the seating plan tool on that is brill, thank you ladies for suggesting that, much appreciated! x.

You're welcome.. it was my OH that discovered it last night so I will tell him and he'll be uber-proud of himself for spreading the Martha Stewart love.. he's such a girl haha

I started to do one on paper a few months ago, but then realised that I kept adding people to the guest list so have decided to hold off until either a) the invites are sent out b) the rsvps are back in. I figured no point in doing it just to redo it later!

This is a big brain buster for us! We have looked at the various ways, including no seating plan at all, but we want everyone to have a good laugh together so are trying to match personalities etc.

I like the Ipad idea!! I might buy one just for this! lol