Answers
How do I make
a seating chart?
Six steps, in an order that stops you doing the whole thing twice.
How do I make a seating chart?
Wait for confirmed replies, then work in this order: fix the table count, seat households together, give every table one confident host, place the difficult pairs, then fill the rest. Write your constraints down — a seating plan is always redrawn at least once, and constraints held only in your head do not survive it.
01
The order.
Do not start before replies are in
A chart built on invitations rather than acceptances gets rebuilt entirely. Wait for the reply deadline, then start.
Fix the table count from the venue
Table shape and size decide how many people fit and how they can talk. Round tables of eight to ten seat more conversation than long tables of the same capacity.
Seat households together, then break them deliberately
Start with households intact, then split only where you have a reason — a couple who will enjoy separate tables, a family too large for one.
Give every table a host
One confident person per table who knows several others. It is the single most effective thing you can do for a room's atmosphere, and it costs nothing.
Place the hard cases before the easy ones
Divorced parents, exes, the relative nobody can sit near — place these first, while you still have the whole room to work with. Left to last, they have nowhere to go.
Write the constraints down
"These two not together." "This person hosts." Written down they survive the redraw that a late reply will force. Held in your head they do not.
02
Common questions
When should I start?
Do I need a seating plan at all?
How do I handle a late change?
State the constraint, not the diagram.
Evorrah's seating works from constraints written in plain English against the live reply list — so when a late change forces a redraw, the rules are still there.
See how seating works