Seating plan

Unassigned seating plan can cause a big confusion for your catering company or the venue.

Suggestions for 2 ways of knowing who is served what meal:

1. Name card with coloured stones indicating the meal choice as dishes are being served.

2. Name tags with pins allowing the servers to go table by table counting what meals are to be brought out by indicators (stones, letters, colours, etc.).

Seating plan has the advantage of knowing the people seated are getting their meals without much running around provided the caterer or venue is provided with copy of the seating plan and meals. This option was my choice as I indicated who was seating where and servers knew whom was veg and non-veg without questions and a smooth operation. My way of doing this was by putting the favour with the Thank you card and personalized names.

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Took the words right out of my mouth!

Only thing I would say is to at least assign seating for immediate family perhaps? Like keep your parents & siblings closest?

Oh that’s a great idea!!

Could you have unassinged seating but each guests takes a place card that is a different colour and each colour would be assigned to a meal. The place card would have the name of your guest and the servers would know who gets what based on the colour of place card.

View quoted message That’s what I was thinking!

I think skipping a specific seating plan is fine, but assign tables at the least. This means that you can have people take their table card with them, then the servers will know who gets what meal (if you're letting people choose different meal options).

I would ask the catering company how that would work. See how they have dealt with that in the past. I would say it would be pretty hard for them to do that. Unless they had people raise their hands when they announce they are bringing out what meat?

Try having the guest at each table have a card that the server picks up before getting meals? Or do the table numbers only and make note that certain tables are the ones with allergies.. Etc

View quoted message This is a very good point with the escort cards! I didn’t even think of that for when I do our seating plan.
Carla I would suggest assigned tables at least and then you can always do escort cards as Kelsie had mentioned or give your venue a break down of who got what at each table

Since you have meal options your best bet would be to do assigned seats. It makes it easier for a seamless dinner service. You can talk to your venue see their recommendations but I bet they will highly recommend a seating plan.

View quoted message I don’t know if your resort has this, but my venue will send us a link to a computer program they have with our set up and we just have to plug in names.

which seems pretty easy.

maybe see if your resort has something like that to make it a bit easier for you!

View quoted message I will touch base with my Resort! I only have 80 so a seating plan wouldn’t be hard to draw up!

Our venue told us we needed a seating plan so the servers can identify who gets what at each table. We also need to provide escort cards which indicate their meals so guests can’t tell the server “I wanted beef” when they really requested chicken and screw up the numbers.

I recommend the seating plan with escort cards that clearly indicate food choice.

I will keep that in mind. I’ll have to touch base with the resort. My idea is to have the meal choice indicated on the place setting and each guest can take it to whichever table they choose. And staff can know what they chose based on the place card!

If you are having different meal options, I would strongly recommend a seating plan. That way the serving staff will know who ordered what. I know it's extra work but it'll keep things organized. If you were doing a buffet, you'd be able to pull off the no-seating plan much better!