Most of your wedding planning is done, you’ve sent out your invitations and have received back your responses. Now it’s time to start the ever tricky wedding floor plan. Wedding floor planning can be stress-free and fun, trust us. Today we are giving you some tips and tricks for creating the perfect floor plan.
Fight the urge to start this process too early. You definitely want to wait until you have received all your response cards back and know your exact guest count. This ensures you are creating an accurate seating plan that will include all your attending guests.
Be sure to get a floor plan or table layout from your wedding venue. You will want to ensure the plan is detailed and to scale so that you know exactly what your room layout will look like.
Tables
One question we are often asked is how many people fit at a wedding table? Our tables at both Saphire Event Group properties are 60” rounds. This size is the standard in the wedding industry and can fit up to ten people. We also have a few 54” round tables on hand, which seat up to eight people. We highly recommend planning as many tables of ten as you can. This will create more space and a better flow throughout the ballroom.
If you would like to seat more than ten guests per table, you will need a table larger than the standard 60” round. Be sure to check with your venue to see if they have 72” tables in house or if you will have to work with a rental company to bring in that size table.
Wedding Planner Tip: If you are planning to have specialty chargers at each place setting, a 60” round table will only fit eight guests. If you would prefer the option of having eight, nine or ten guests per table, we recommend using specialty dinner plates instead of actual chargers. Dinner plates are smaller in diameter and allow for more guests per table with a similar look and feel. Also, we also love skipping plates all together and having a colored napkin, wedding menu or pretty favor to mark each place setting.
Creating Your Wedding Seating Plan
Now that you know how many guests fit per table, you are ready to get your floor plan started. The easiest and most stress-free way to create a perfect seating plan is with paper plates and sticky notes. YES, really!
First, you will use one paper plate to represent each table on your floor plan. We suggest laying them out as close as possible to the table plan map your venue gave you. This way you can make note of which tables are closet to the dance floor and which are closest to other amenities such as the bar.
Next, you’ll have sticky notes in three different colors. One color will represent the bride’s guests, one the groom’s guests and the third color will be for your friends. This will help you visualize the room and where guests from each family are seated. You should have one sticky note to represent each guest attending your wedding.
Finally, start sticking! Place each sticky notes on the paper plates to represent a place setting. The best part about this method is you can change and rearrange as many times as you would like until you have the perfect seating plan.
Once you are happy and have nailed down the final plan, you can create a more formal spread sheet that has each guests name and which table they are assigned to.
For a more detailed tutorial and some gorgeous examples, check out our YouTube video about Wedding Floor Plans!
By: Dana Bates
