Lately, it has been trendy to have guests “pick a seat, not a side” – essentially, not have a seating chart. I get it, if you have a big guest list it can be time consuming to figure out who should sit where. However, the odds of a large group of people perfectly filling the amount of tables you have are slim. There would likely be empty seats at several tables, and you would need to have more tables prepared to accommodate this (more money spent on table settings & decorations). Additionally, do you really want your drunk college friends up front and Grandma stuck in the back? Or your uncles that fight every time they see each other sitting close? Taking the time to create a seating chart will ensure everyone has a place to sit and that your family or guests of honor can be closer to the head table. Don’t stress about the chart too much though, they are just sitting there for dinner – not glued to their seats the entire night!
I have a decent sized family so when it came to the seating chart, the last thing I wanted to do was print out 280 individual place cards…For one thing, printing those throw away place cards can be expensive. Secondly, I could not bare to ask someone to alphabetize them a couple of hours before those 280 people walked in – I know you can alphabetize them ahead of time, but I know they can get mixed up, names can get lost, etc.
A few family members started creating a seating chart “poster” instead of the traditional place cards. I found this frame for free at a garage sale and just bought a can of spray paint to clean it up a bit. Sure, it had seen better days but I thought it had character. My sister in law created the alphabetized chart and had it printed for fairly cheep at Office Max and BAM, we had an inexpensive but tasteful way to inform our guests where they were sitting.
Tidbits 