Do I Have to Have Seating For All My Wedding Guests?



Guests have left their seats and gone to the dance floor. Notice they have a place to leave coats and purses.

 Let’s talk again about what is going to make your guests happy. I see some of the craziest advice out there about how you should plan your wedding and what you should do. Sometimes I want to ask these people have they ever even been to a wedding. A lot of times, I know they may have these ideas but I can guarantee you they are not the ones staying all night and watching these ideas work out.

For example, over and over again I hear “have a cocktail reception, let your guests mingle and don’t worry about seating for everyone.” Ok, after all my years of experience (and there are quite a few), I am here to tell you this WILL NOT WORK. Well at least it will not work for a wedding where there will be dancing and drinking after dinner. I think the term cocktail reception may be the problem. A lot of brides seem to think that if they are having heavy hor d’oeuvers, as the menu it is a “cocktail” reception. No, a cocktail reception is where there is no dancing or entertainment after dinner. It is eating, mingling and maybe some background music. These receptions are short, at the most two hours and then over.

If you are planning a typical wedding reception with cocktail hour, dinner, toasts, cake cutting, and dancing, not having seating for everyone is a DISASTOR as far as guests are concerned. I mean think about it, do you want to stand holding your purse, jacket and a plate of food for 4 or more hours. Of course not, no one does. Are you going to dance, holding your purse and jacket? No. What are you going to do? You are going to leave as soon as possible.

I can hear you saying “well my older guests will leave and then there will be enough seating for everyone”. Maybe, maybe some will leave early, most won’t leave until after the dancing is well underway. So who leaves… the people with no seats, the young people.

Every time we have a bride with a short seating count, (and this only happens with Month Of’s where I wasn’t involved in all the planning), my group spends most of the evening trying to find seats for people. Guests are dragging ugly folding chairs out of some closet or hallway.

You don't have to have chairs for everyone, seats on sofa's and benches work for a heavy hors d'oeuvres reception.

Now you ask, do I need an actual seat at a table for everyone? In a perfect world, yes this is the best for making your guests happy. But the true answer is no, you can get by with having just a chair, a spot on a sofa, a bench, it doesn’t matter as long as they can have a spot to sit down and call their own for the evening.