How to make a seating chart
- List your guests. Type or paste one household per line. “Ann & Bob Smith” is a couple who share a surname, “The Kims: Jae, Min, Leo” a family with a name of its own, and “Dan Lee +1” (or “Dan Lee and guest”) adds a guest for Dan. A pasted spreadsheet column written “Smith, John” can be read as one person per line: tick the box that appears. The counter under the box shows how many guests and households it found.
- Set up the tables. In Tables, start from a layout (a holiday dinner with a kids’ table, a wedding with a head table or a sweetheart table, banquet rows, party rounds) or add round tables, rectangles and head tables one by one. Tap a table on the plan to change its shape, its number of seats or whether a long table has seats at the ends, rotate it, or remove it. Drag tables to where they stand in the room.
- Seat people. Drag a name from Not seated yet onto a seat, or tap the name and then the seat. Dropping someone on a taken seat swaps the two; dragging a seated guest back to the list unseats them. After you seat one member of a household, the next one is picked for you.
- Let it suggest the rest. Suggest seats fills the empty seats with everyone who doesn’t have one, without moving anyone you placed yourself. Households sit at one table, side by side where there is room.
- Print. In Print, pick a look and paper, then download the floor chart, the alphabetical “find your seat” list, place cards and table numbers.
Rules: who sits apart, who sits together
Every family has a pair who shouldn’t share a table, and every wedding has a friend who only knows one other person. In Rules, add “keep apart from” or “seat together with” for any two guests. Suggest seats never puts a keep-apart pair at the same table and seats a together pair at one table; if a partner is already seated, the other joins their table. Rules are also checked while you move people by hand: a guest who breaks one turns red on the plan, and the Rules tab says which rule and at which tables. A household that ends up at two tables is listed there too, so you can see the split before the day.
When the seats run out, Suggest seats leaves the last guests unseated and says how many; the summary above the plan shows how many more seats you need. A household bigger than any table’s free seats is split rather than left out, and the message says so.
What the printouts are for
- Floor chart: the tables to scale with every name at its seat, for the host, the caterer or the easel at the door. It turns to landscape when the room is wider than deep. Names get small on Letter paper once there are more than a few tables; the 18 × 24 and 24 × 36 inch poster sizes print them large enough to read standing up, and a copy shop can print the PDF.
- Find your seat: every seated guest in alphabetical order by surname (or first name) with their table, in columns, with letter headings once the list is long. It fits one poster page when it can, and a “Guest of Dan Lee” sorts right after Dan Lee.
- Place cards: four folded tent cards per sheet in the order you’ll set the tables, table by table and seat by seat. Cut along the solid lines, fold along the dashed ones. The name prints on both faces, so guests on the far side can read it, with the table name underneath if you like.
- Table numbers: one folded card per table, the number large on both faces. A table with its own name (“Head table”, “Kids’ table”) prints the name instead.
Tips for a seating plan that works
- Seat the hard cases first. Place the couple, the grandparents near the door, the guest who needs a wheelchair space, then let Suggest seats fill around them: it never moves anyone you placed.
- Size tables by chairs, not by guests. As of October 2026, the Hill Country Event Rentals table guide puts 6–8 people at a 60-inch round and 8–10 at a 72-inch, and the Party Rental Ltd. seating guide allows 8–10 and 10–12; both seat 8–10 at an 8 ft banquet table with someone at each end. Chair style and place settings decide where in that range you land. Fewer, fuller tables usually feel livelier than many half-empty ones.
- Mix, but give everyone an anchor. A table of strangers is fine if each person knows at least one other. A seat-together rule for that pair costs nothing.
- Keep the list in one place. The chart is saved in this browser only. To plan with someone else, use Share result: by default the link holds only the tables, and it carries names only if you tick “Include names in the link”.
Planning the rest of the meal? Make a potluck sign-up sheet for who brings which dish, print address labels for the invitations, or draw names for a gift exchange with the Secret Santa generator.