seating charts!

[cocolaw]

how are you doing your seating charts? any special rules that you are following? we have a long table and my fiance and i will be seated in the middle with our best man and matron of honor on either side, and then our guests will each be on our side. we were thinking that we would have our close friends that have made the trip across from us and around us (there are not many of them), that way the young people would be together. then my family and my mom''s friends would be on my side of the long table and fiance''s family and parent''s friends would be on his side.

my fmil whispers a lot, even during dinner...so i definitely don''t want her by my fiance because i think it''s tacky and would be really annoying during our reception. we are having place cards made, but i am worried that if i put fiance''s brother by him, fmil would force the brother to switch with her. but i really want his brother by him since he is the best man. is there any way to avoid this?

my mom does not care who she sits by. she will probably want to be by old friends who don''t know many people there so that she can make them feel comfortable.

any suggestions without yelling "do not trade places! i worked a long time on this seating chart!!" i mean it should be obvious not to move around, but you never know

 

[Clairitek]

I think you''re off to a good start with the placement if your MOH/Best Man and close friends and then the groups of family on either side of you and your FH. Without knowing much about what other family members and parent''s friends that will be attending from your FH''s side its hard to give more input but perhaps just put FMIL and FFIL at the head of the long table on that end and then fill in the space between them and your FH with their crew. Then put your mother at the head of the table on the other end and fill in the space accordingly.

This is sort of what I did at my reception (we had two long tables, only 35 people) and it worked out well because they each got a place of honor (head of the table) with their closest people near them. Then we put most of the younger people and our BP at the long table with us. There was tons of mingling between courses anyways so people didn''t really spend a ton of time in their seats.

My guess is that once things get rolling on that day, you won''t notice your FMILs annoying whispering habit.