Seating chart guides

Canva Wedding Seating Chart Templates: Great Poster, Wrong Tool for Planning — Canva's seating chart templates are genuinely lovely, free, and easy to edit — as posters. The catch is that a poster isn't a plan. Here's where Canva shines, where it quietly breaks, and the hybrid workflow that gets you both.
The Knot's Seating Chart Tool: A Fair Review (and When to Switch) — The Knot is brilliant at collecting your guest list and your RSVPs. Then you sit down to actually seat 140 people and discover the seating chart part is mostly templates and a tool that's still on the way. Here's a fair look at what's there, what isn't, and when it's time for a dedicated planner.
Zola's Seating Chart Tool: What It Does Well (and When You'll Outgrow It) — Zola's seating chart is genuinely useful — free to try, wired into the guest list you already built, fine for straightforward rooms. But somewhere around the divorced-parents problem, most couples hit its edges. Here's an honest map of where they are.
Where to Seat Single Guests at Your Wedding (Without a 'Singles Table') — The dedicated singles table feels efficient and kind. It's neither. Here's how to seat your single guests so they have a great night — the anchor strategy, the plus-one math, and what to do with the friend who knows nobody.
Round vs. Long Tables at Your Wedding: The Honest Trade-Offs — Round tables or long banquet rows? It looks like an aesthetic choice, but it changes your floor plan, your budget, your photos, and — most underrated of all — your seating chart math. Here are the honest trade-offs.
Wedding Seating Chart for 100 Guests: Tables, Layout, and a Step-by-Step Plan — 100 guests is the most common wedding size — and a strangely awkward one to seat. The math almost works out cleanly, then plus-ones and late declines break it. Here's the exact table count, the room dimensions you need, and a step-by-step plan for getting everyone placed.
Escort Cards vs. Place Cards: What's the Difference (and Do You Need Both)? — Escort cards and place cards sound interchangeable, and stationery sites are happy to keep it that way. They do two different jobs — one gets guests to the right table, one puts them in the right chair. Here's which you actually need.
Assigned Seats vs. Assigned Tables at Your Wedding: Which Do You Need? — Open seating, assigned tables, or assigned seats — three options, and the internet won't give you a straight answer about which one you need. Here's the honest breakdown, including what your caterer will quietly require and what you'll actually have to print.
Awkward Wedding Seating: Cousins Who Don't Speak, Work Friends, and Other Tricky Tables — Every wedding has them — the cousins who haven't spoken since 2019, the work friend who knows nobody, the plus-one nobody's met. Here's exactly how to handle the tricky tables, one scenario at a time.
How to Display Your Wedding Seating Chart: Signs, Sizes, and Setup — Your seating chart is finished. Now where does it go, how big should it be, and how do you stop 140 guests from forming a single-file queue to read it? Here's the practical setup guide nobody publishes.
Do You Actually Need a Wedding Seating Chart? — Open seating sounds easier — no chart, no constraints, no drama. Until 140 guests walk in at once and nobody knows where to sit. Here's how to decide whether you actually need a seating chart, based on your guest count, venue, and meal style.
The Wedding Seating Chart Checklist: Everything You Need Before You Start — The seating chart goes faster when you gather everything before you sit down. Here's the complete checklist — everything you need before you open a tool, a spreadsheet, or a stack of sticky notes.
When Should You Start Your Wedding Seating Chart? — You're six months from the wedding and someone (probably your mom) asks: 'Have you started the seating chart?' Don't. Not yet. Here's why — and when to actually start.
Wedding Seater vs. AllSeated: Which Seating Chart Tool Is Right for You? — If you've been searching for a wedding seating chart tool, you've probably found two names: AllSeated (now part of Cvent) and Wedding Seater. They're both visual seating chart tools, but they're built for very different users. Here's an honest comparison.
Who Sits at the Head Table? Wedding Head Table Seating Guide — The head table is the most visible, most debated, and most anxiety-inducing table at your entire wedding. Everyone will look at it. Everyone will notice who's there. And everyone will have an opinion about the arrangement. Here are your options.
Wedding Seating Chart for 150 Guests: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough — A 150-guest wedding is the most common seating chart challenge. It's big enough that you can't hold the whole layout in your head, small enough that every guest will notice where they're seated, and complex enough that 'just put them anywhere' doesn't work. Here's exactly how to do it.
How to Collaborate on a Wedding Seating Chart Without Fighting — The seating chart isn't a solo project. Your fiancé has opinions. Your mom has opinions. Your maid of honor has opinions. The solution isn't doing it alone — it's having a system for doing it together without driving each other insane.
Wedding Seating Etiquette: The Rules That Actually Matter — Wedding seating etiquette exists for one reason: to prevent social disasters. The rules evolved because enough couples learned the hard way that putting certain people in certain seats creates problems. But a lot of 'etiquette' is also outdated, arbitrary, or only applicable to formal weddings with a protocol officer.
How Many Guests Per Table? The Wedding Seating Math — The math is straightforward, but it matters more than you think. Put 11 guests at a table designed for 10, and everyone's elbows are touching for three hours. Leave a table with 5 guests in a room of tables of 10, and those five people feel forgotten. Here are the numbers you actually need.
Wedding Table Planner: Round Tables, Long Tables, and Everything Between — Before you seat a single guest, you need to decide what they're sitting at. The table shape, size, and arrangement determine everything: how many people fit, how conversations flow, how the room looks, and how much floor space you need. This is the table planner's job — and it comes before the seating chart.
How to Make a Wedding Seating Chart in Google Sheets (And Why You'll Hate It) — Google Sheets is free, familiar, and where most couples start their seating chart. Let's be honest about what you're signing up for: it works, but it's going to frustrate you. Here's how to set it up — and exactly where it breaks down.
Wedding Reception Seating Chart: From Guest List to Final Layout — The ceremony is the emotional heart of your wedding. The reception is the logistical one. And at the center of reception logistics sits the seating chart: the single document that determines every guest's experience for the next three to five hours.
How to Seat Divorced Parents at Your Wedding — If your parents are divorced, you've been dreading this part of wedding planning. Maybe more than any other part. The seating chart is where every buried family tension becomes a spatial problem — here's exactly how to fix it.
Wedding Seating Chart App: Do You Need One? — You've typed 'wedding seating chart app' into your phone. You're probably in bed. You're probably supposed to be sleeping. And you're probably thinking about the seating chart you've been putting off for two weeks. Let's answer the question quickly: do you need a dedicated app?
Drag-and-Drop Seating Charts: Why Visual Beats Spreadsheet — Open a spreadsheet. Look at Row 14, Column B. That's where Aunt Carol is sitting. Can you picture it? Can you see which table she's near? Can you tell if she's next to the speakers, by the door, or three seats away from your mom's ex-husband? You can't. Because a spreadsheet has no concept of space.
The Complete Guide to Wedding Seating Arrangements — A wedding seating arrangement is more than a logistics exercise. It's social engineering. You're deciding who spends three hours next to whom, which conversations will happen, and which conflicts will be avoided — for every person at your wedding, all at once.
Free Seating Chart Maker: What to Look For (and What to Avoid) — "Free" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the seating chart maker market. Some tools are genuinely free. Others are "free" the way a gym membership trial is free: you get seven days, you forget to cancel, and suddenly you're paying $14.99 a month for a seating chart you finished three weeks ago.
15 Wedding Seating Chart Ideas for Every Venue Style — You've seen the Pinterest boards. Elegant calligraphy signs. Mirror displays with gold lettering. Those are seating chart display ideas. This article is about something different: the actual layout — how to arrange tables so your reception flows, conversations happen, and nobody ends up at the lonely table in the corner.
Wedding Seating Chart Template vs. a Real Planner — Which Is Better? — If you Google 'wedding seating chart template,' you'll find hundreds of options. Clean grids. Numbered circles. Color-coded columns. They look productive. They feel like progress. And then you try to actually use one.
The 7 Best Free Seating Chart Makers in 2026 — You need a seating chart maker. You've Googled it. And now you're staring at a wall of tools that all claim to be the best, the easiest, and the most free. Here's what we found after testing every option we could find.
How to Make a Wedding Seating Chart (Without Losing Your Mind) — The wedding seating chart is the task nobody warns you about. You've picked the venue, sent the invitations, and then one night you open a spreadsheet, stare at 142 names, and realise you have no idea where anyone should sit. Here's the good news: it doesn't have to take three weekends.