Seating plans

Keep people in their groups! Hopefully people will mix during cocktail hour / evening entertainment but it’s nice to catch up with friends at a wedding. That’s what we’re doing anyway.

I think it depends on the group's who are coming and how many people don't really know anyone else. We have mixed people up, but partners are sat next to eachother and anyone single has at least one person on their table they know. All of our tables have someone from his family, someone from mine, his friends, my friends.
We didn't want there to be a few loud "fun" tables because everyone is really close and then the people who don't know many people feeling like they've been put on the leftover tables...

We’ve not sat down and looked at it properly but I think we’re going to have to mix people up - we’ve got tables that seat 10 and a few groups of 6-8 people. It doesn’t seem fair to me to have 8 people who know each other and then a random couple! Will sit people with at least one person they know though (which is tough as quite a few people only know one or two others). At the end of the day, it’s only for a couple of hours and there will be plenty of time for people to mix during the rest of the day.

I have tables of 8 and am planning on approaching it like this:
(1) keeping couples together (with the exception of the best man, who is on the top table, but we're positioning his girlfriend in the nearest table spot to him so they can still chat and with people she knows well enough to have a fun time with)

(2) each couple will be seated with at least one other couple/single person that they know AND another pair of couples who also know each other

(3) the idea is that we'll pair off the pairs of couples with people we think might get along e.g. we constantly say that one of my bridesmaids and her OH remind us so much of one of FH's friends and his OH, so we're putting them on the same table as we think they'd really get on / we were both at the same uni but in different circles so might put two couples from FH's uni group with two couples from my uni group as we know there's a common ground for conversation there

(4) no singles table, we're attaching the single people to people we know they're friends with so they still have an enjoyable time without feeling like we're matchmaking them or pointing out that they're single

(5) we have a skew towards men in our guest list, but we'll roughly be going MMFFMMFF round the tables as we've found this typically means people are next to their OH and their friend, rather than their OH and someone else's OH

(6) with families, parents are on the top table, incl FFIL's long term partner so three 'parents' for FH, but we're putting my brother on a table with my best friend who is the other usher (they love each other and asked to sit next to each other aww) and people we think they get on with, and FH's sister on a table with her grandparents (mine are no longer with us) and people we think they'll get on with; typically this has meant my brother's table has more of a skew to my friends from home (me and our hometown being the common ground) and FH's sister's table having more of a skew to his friends from home (him and their hometown being the common ground) -- FYI my brother and FH's sister have so far never met and are very different people, so we felt like forcing them together into a 'family table' would probably just feel a bit awkward and obligatory rather than giving them each the best possible time so that's the main reason we've separated them

(7) some of the wedding party are on the top table (best man, MOH and our friend officiant - the latter two are both single), but we're trying to mix up the others and their OH's across the tables so it doesn't feel like there's a "wedding party table"

(8) there's a handful of people/couples who won't know anyone else, so here we're just trying really hard to follow point 3 and put them with people we think they'll find it easy to talk to

(9) we've started this process SO EARLY, obviously it might change depending on who declines and we might have to sub people in, but there's some guarantees like those in the wedding party which we're using to anchor tables, and we're also thinking of a few options of who we might be able to pair with who and who is likely to be tricky to place, so hopefully we feel well prepared and not super overwhelmed when the RSPVs come in

Hope that helps!

It's nice to keep groups of friends together, as long as you don't have end up filling odd spaces with people not in that group.

So if your tables seat 8 and you have a group of 8 friends coming, then by all means put them on the same table. But if you have a group of 6 or 7 friends, then it would be better to split the group in half, because otherwise, the one or two people not in the group are going to feel very left out on that table!

Another thing to think about is life stages - if possible, make sure that your table either has a good mix of married/engaged and dating/single OR have tables that are only married/engaged. As someone who was single for two decades and went to dozens of weddings on my own, I know it is REALLY boring to be stuck on a table where everyone else has either been married or is planning to be soon. Because ALL they talk about is what their wedding was like/is going to be like, and you end up sitting there like a lemon with nothing to contribute to the conversation! Same thing with kids - either have everyone with young kids sitting together or make the tables half with kids & half without. Basically, you want to make sure that either everyone on the table has the same thing in common so they can all talk about it, or that there is a real mix so one topic doesn't dominate the conversation at the expense of those who can't join in.

And yes to Chloe's suggestion to avoid 'singles' tables - they can work well, but I've been to a couple of weddings where I felt a bit like a heifer in a cattle market...

I haven't looked at my seating plan to seriously yet as I'm waiting for the final 15 RSVPs before I give it too much thought (plus it was a massive headache when I had a quick look).
I'm definitely planning on trying to seat people in couples where I can, and with people they know as much as possible. The last wedding I went to the meal for, I was seated with people I didn't know who were the bride's family and it was SO UNCOMFORTABLE for the whole two hours of the meal. I wouldn't want to put anyone else through that.

I'm having this dilemma now as I have one table of friends and I'm just worried about them bring too loud together (sounds like I'm trying to spoil the fun but I'm not)....