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Seating charts: the fifth circle of hell
The guest list is set. We've received all of the RSVPs. We know who is coming and who is not and what they want to eat. There's just one thing left to do: the seating chart.
There are several schools of thought on how to arrange people at the reception tables. One of the most popular strategies is to sit the groom's family together; the bride's family together; mutual friends together and so on and so forth until you have 12 nice little pods of homogeneous dining.
Another popular course of action is to create a potpourri of table mates, with a representative from each clique at each table, a sort of United Nations of invited guests.
In my research, these are the two most popular and accepted ways to create a seating chart. Well, I have a wild idea: how about we just let people sit wherever the hell they want. Give them a place card and say "Go nuts!" That way, nobody can be upset about where they are sitting, because, Ta Da, they picked their seat. If grumpy old Uncle Phineas is pissed because he had to sit next to chipper, sunny Cousin Melvin, then maybe he should have gotten to the reception on time.
The most compelling reason to do have a free-for-all chair-grabbing melee is that it alleviates my future bride, and more importantly me, from the responsibility of completing the Herculean task of assigning 130 seats and not making anybody hate us for the rest of our lives.
All the books say to make it easier, we should create a preliminary chart, then present it to each of our parents for their approval. This creates a whole new set of problems. Each of our parents has a different opinion of their family members, as well as the other side's family. Which parent (read: Mom) do we give the chart to first? If the mother of the bride has an issue with one of our decisions, and the mother of the groom has a different issue, how do we reconcile them? To me, it seems an insurmountable endeavor. There is just not any way it's going to be possible to please everyone.
I have a simple solution: we will make the seating chart and not show it to anybody until they get to the reception, parents included. It's our wedding, we're making the decisions and everybody is going to have to deal with it. Unfortunately this isn't just my wedding. I'm sharing it with somebody who cares a little more about it that I do. So, naturally, we will show the chart to our parents and try to make it work.
I'm beginning to see that wedding planning is kind of like boot camp for people who are engaged: the purpose of it is to push you to your limits and prove that you can do anything if you've picked the right person.
There are several schools of thought on how to arrange people at the reception tables. One of the most popular strategies is to sit the groom's family together; the bride's family together; mutual friends together and so on and so forth until you have 12 nice little pods of homogeneous dining.
Another popular course of action is to create a potpourri of table mates, with a representative from each clique at each table, a sort of United Nations of invited guests.
In my research, these are the two most popular and accepted ways to create a seating chart. Well, I have a wild idea: how about we just let people sit wherever the hell they want. Give them a place card and say "Go nuts!" That way, nobody can be upset about where they are sitting, because, Ta Da, they picked their seat. If grumpy old Uncle Phineas is pissed because he had to sit next to chipper, sunny Cousin Melvin, then maybe he should have gotten to the reception on time.
The most compelling reason to do have a free-for-all chair-grabbing melee is that it alleviates my future bride, and more importantly me, from the responsibility of completing the Herculean task of assigning 130 seats and not making anybody hate us for the rest of our lives.
All the books say to make it easier, we should create a preliminary chart, then present it to each of our parents for their approval. This creates a whole new set of problems. Each of our parents has a different opinion of their family members, as well as the other side's family. Which parent (read: Mom) do we give the chart to first? If the mother of the bride has an issue with one of our decisions, and the mother of the groom has a different issue, how do we reconcile them? To me, it seems an insurmountable endeavor. There is just not any way it's going to be possible to please everyone.
I have a simple solution: we will make the seating chart and not show it to anybody until they get to the reception, parents included. It's our wedding, we're making the decisions and everybody is going to have to deal with it. Unfortunately this isn't just my wedding. I'm sharing it with somebody who cares a little more about it that I do. So, naturally, we will show the chart to our parents and try to make it work.
I'm beginning to see that wedding planning is kind of like boot camp for people who are engaged: the purpose of it is to push you to your limits and prove that you can do anything if you've picked the right person.
posted by Vince Sullivan at
10:26 AM
3 Comments
