How To Prepare a Good Seating Plan.

A best time to prepare a good seating plan is when you have received most of the wedding acceptance cards.

Write each name individually on some paper so you can cut round each one. This allows you to move the names around with ease trying different thought plans for each table. Doing it this way saves you a lot of time rewriting each name and using lots of paper until you eventually have found the best seating plan.

Group wedding guests into friends or family groups.

Have couples sitting on the shared table but not necessarily next to each other.

Try to think of a person on each table who would be good at keeping the conversation flowing when seating family groups and friends together. This also works well if your inviting a family who may not know many people. They could be seated next to others who might have children of a similar age group.

For those guests who are attending on their own, try to place them with those who share a similar interest or profession, this will help them to feel more comfortable and included on their table during your Wedding Breakfast.

How To Prepare the Top Table

If you are looking towards the top table traditionally the seating would be from left to right:

  • Chief Bridesmaid
  • Groom’s Father
  • Bride’s Mother
  • Groom
  • Bride
  • Bride’s Father
  • Groom’s Mother
  • Best Man

If your parents are separated or divorced then the seating plan can be a bit tricky. Try changing the traditional top table seating plan to suit your circumstances:

Think about having the top table just for yourselves, the Bridesmaids and Best Man. The parents could each be seated close by with their respective partners on some nearby tables.



Here is a wedding timetable guideline to help you plan your reception run smoothly.

The Wedding Reception Timetable.

The Bridal Party arrives
The main Bridal Party stands in line to welcome the guests. This can be as the guests arrive before collecting their ‘Welcoming Drink’ or to have the Receiving Line after the ‘Welcoming Drink’ and photographs but before entering the Wedding Breakfast.
The Wedding Breakfast
Speeches and Toasts
Cutting the Wedding Cake
The Bride and Groom – First Dance
Live band or DJ music and entertainment
Throwing the Bouquet
Going Away

Remember the above is just a guideline of how a timetable would run traditionally. It is quite popular now for the speeches and the cutting of the cake to be done before the meal. Doing it this way allows the Bride, Groom and especially those making a speech, to get their pressure done earlier on, so enabling them to enjoy the meal and have a few drinks!

Wedding Drinks



It can be cost effective if the wedding drinks are included in the price per head charged by your wedding caterer or by the wedding venue. This is particularly helpful and can save you time, effort and money than bringing your own wine and having to pay extra for the corkage charge.

Providing Your Own Drinks
If you are providing your own wine then most off-licences and wine merchants will give you advice as well as sale-or-return, bulk discounts, glass hire and free delivery too.

A Toast To The Bride And Groom

Traditionally Champagne is the drink that would be served throughout the day but this will be rather expensive. Nowadays it’s quite popular to serve a well chosen sparkling wine, usually you can’t tell the difference. The sparkling white wine is then used as a ‘toast’ to the Bride and Groom and it’s also drunk in salute of ‘cutting the cake’.

The Welcoming Drink
Bucks Fizz, Pimms or Sangria are excellent choices to serve as a welcome to all the guests as they arrive at the wedding venue. Not forgetting plenty of non alcoholic drinks such as mineral water and orange juice. A good suggestion for a hot summer wedding welcoming drink is a delicious fruit punch, likewise a mulled wine can be very welcoming for a winter wedding as is especially suited around the Christmas period.

Wines In General
It is not so important nowadays to drink white wine while eating fish or chicken dishes and red wine for beef, lamb or pork dishes. It’s really better to have a mixture of red and white wines to suit each person’s palette. Your Wedding Planner or Wedding Organizer can advise you. If you are supplying your own alcohol, then your off-licence or wine merchants will give you good advice too. It’s best to try and stick to your budget allowance so you don’t overspend and don’t buy too many choices of wines…keep the choice simple and straightforward, it will save you money too.

A General Wine Guide
Doux is a sweet wine
Demi-sec is a medium-dry wine
Sec is a dry wine
Brut is a very dry wine

Generally allow 6 glasses per 70cl bottle. You would need two glasses per head of Champagne or sparkling white wine for the ‘toasts’.

For the table wine allow about half a bottle per head.

All non-alcoholic drinks, soft drinks, mineral water including tea and coffee should be on tap throughout the day.

A Pay Bar
Think about when you would like to have a pay bar. You could either set a ‘drinks limit’ in advance so the bar staff are aware when your guests have to purchase their own drinks. Alternately your invitations could state ‘Pay bar after 7pm’ this can save a lot of confusion later.

Hints And Tips About Wedding Drinks
Buy wines you can afford and keep the choice simple.
Think about how much your budget will allow or the free ‘drinks limit’.
Wedding guests can be annoyed if the drinks are overpriced so check the prices well in advance of your wedding reception bar drinks.
Find out if there are any corkage charges.
If you are using non-licenced premises, why not have a mobile bar?
Check what the last orders and bar closure times are, it’s not worth booking a live band or DJ to play until 1am if the bar loses at 11pm!

A excellent recommended book to help you plan your wedding day is:

Wise Wedding Planning:
Making The Perfect Theme Wedding Possible At  Any Price
By Brenda Westwood.