Duck, duck, duck....goose!

Seating assignments are one of those things that are a matter of personal opinion at weddings.  There are several reasons why some do and some don't choose to assign guests to specific tables or seats.  And neither way is right or wrong, it's really just what works for you.

I have heard many people say they like being able to find whoever they want to sit with at a wedding because they know their friends or that really cute guy they're hoping to hook up with on the dance floor.  Then others say they appreciate having assigned seats because they don't have to do deal with the awkwardness of intruding on someone's table or feeling like they don't know anyone at the wedding so they aren't sure where to go. 

For me, I definitely wanted to assign seats.  Mostly because we wanted family closest to the dance floor and center of the room and because we know our family and friends and so we know who they will best click with at a table. 

For some people, trying to figure out the seating arrangements is a nightmare filled with lists of names that get crossed off and re-written in or bunches of 3 x 5 cards or little tags that get moved all over a large table or piece of paper or whatever.  But for me, well, 3 years ago when my sister got married I found this cool little online seating program for your computer.  I figured I'd share some of the features and screen shots as I have begun to assign our guests to seats.  Check it:

I imported all of my guests from an Excel spreadsheet I had created.  The program lets you add in individuals or groups (families, couples, etc).  You can enter names, addresses, contact info, etc.  It also lets you select if the guest is male or female and an adult or child.  As you can see from the list, I used the 'Notes' section to add in their relationship to the Bride & Groom. There are several columns for you to see what table they have been 'Assigned' to and you can list VIP people.  The little yellow envelopes reflect that an invitation has been sent.  Green check marks reflect that they've accepted and blue X's reflect that they declined.  This is the individual Guests view sorted by last name.

This is the Groups view which sorts the list by groups of couples or families.  Here you will also note that some guests have been assigned to tables.

This is a silly little view to show you how children are differentiated in your lists:  Check out the 'smaller' little pink or blue person next to the guests on the left.

Once all the guests have been imported, you move through some different steps (if you so choose) to add in things like which guests should be sat near each other or in the same proximity.  You can also put in information to reflect which guests should NOT be sat anywhere near each other.  Especially helpful for some of those unfortunate drama moments you are trying to prevent.  As you move through to the next screens, you can see below that there are some tabs for viewing several different types of layouts of your guests and tables.  You can view an overall floor plan (this is the one I mostly use).  Or you can view a schematic, table plan (lists each individual table on it's own page), table chart (shows all of the tables in a list format), guest chart (lists all of the guests in alphabetical order with their table assignments and even seat assignments if you choose and finally the statistics tab (shown below).

Here is a closer view of the Statistics tab which I use often.  It shows you totals of how many guests have been invited, accepted, declined, etc.  It also breaks down how many male and female guests and how many children and adult guests you have.  There are stats on how many guests have been assigned to a seat.  A very cool feature is that you can even track Meal choices as the RSVP's roll in.  We totally used this at my sister's wedding to give to the caterer.  They were able to see which guests had which meals at each table/seat assignment and how many totals of each type of meal they needed instantly. 

After you have entered all the guests' info and have begun collecting RSVP's, you can then create a floorplan.  It's a pretty user friendly program.  You simply create tables: round, square or rectangular and input the dimensions of each table.  List how many people will be sitting at each table and then drag and drop it around your room for where the table can/should be placed.  This is especially helpful for those who have to design their own room layouts.  For us, our rental company already works with our venue and knows the property so they created our room layout themselves and e-mailed it to me.  Then I just recreated the layout in the seating program.  You'll see in the room layout I created below that our dance floor is in the center of the room.The little pink and blue circle you see at the top of the dance floor will be me and Mr Fix It's sweetheart table in front of the fireplace.  The big square off to the left represents the bar and the other two long rectangular areas at the bottom of the room are outside patio areas.  All of these floor plans can be zoomed in and out and have options to switch the views and ways you can see the layout and guest assignments.  And everything can be printed up as well.

In this view, you can see that I've begun to fill in seating assignments.  The pink and blue circles represent male and female guests.  And the smaller circles represent children.  This is helpful for our coordinator as well so that when they are putting favors out, they can easily see where the kids favor boxes will be placed at each table.  And though you can't see it on this shot, there are names of the guests printed within each circle.  On the left side of the screen, you can see that some guests have table numbers next to them in the 'Assigned' column.  This is helpful because you can sort the list and it will show you all the unassigned guests so you can see if you've forgotten to seat anyone.

Here's a closer view of the shot.

What I love is that I can easily print out reports to share with my caterer and coordinator as well as large floor plans of the room to give them so they know where to place favors, place cards, etc.  And by using a computer program, you can easily drag and drop guests around the tables and room as you need to make changes or if someone cancels or sneaks in near the end.  The program will even 'Auto Assign' all the guests for you based on groups and what not and then you can go in and adjust them as needed. 

There is so much I love about this program!  It has made handling my seating assignments so much easier. 

They have updated the version since I bought mine 3 years ago so I am sure there are a lot more helpful features and better report options than what I have.  And it's only $29.95 to buy and you can even download a free 14 day trial!  Check it out here:  Perfect Table Plan

Have you decided to use assigned seating for your guests?  If so, how are you tackling the task of figuring out your floor plan and charts?

Getting to see more of the 'vision' - The centerpiece mockup

So Friday my daughter and I headed over to Flower Allie in Fullerton to meet with my amazing florist, Allison and my wedding coordinator, Amanda.  You should really check out Allison's blog here...she is the coolest florist in Orange County.  Not only does she totally work with your budget, but she provides the same quality and glamour, if not more, than the 'high end' florists who quote you like $4,000 to $10,000!  And on top of all of that, she gets excited about your big day!  Since booking her she has said the following to me:

"Your wedding is going to be beautiful and the flowers will look gorgeous.  You'll love it!"

"You have so many great ideas, I hope you blog about all of this.  Will your photographer provide us with photos after?"

"Your event is going to look so great and it's going to look like you spent a ton more money than you actually are!"

Oh, how I love her.  And I found out that Amy Jean over at the Relentless Bride blog is also using Allison for her upcoming March wedding. 

So we were going there to see a mockup of what our tables and centerpieces are going to look like.  I have lots of pictures to show you!  But first, I just have to list a couple disclaimers:

1)  The lighting in the florist's shops is obviously not good.   We were set up in a corner that didn't get great light. 

2)  My camera, as I have mentioned, is not good at all for shooting true to color.  Therefore, with the not so great lighting and the bad camera images, please grant me a little give in how the final product will look.  This is why I think it's *SO* important to hire professional photographers to shoot your wedding day...they know how to work the lighting!

3)  In our actual reception room, you have to remember that we will have all the candles lit on the table with the mood lighting of the room and some perimeter uplighting in red as well.  So obviously that is going to affect how the linen colors and tabletops look in person or pro pics.

4)  We did tweak just a few things after seeing the mockups so what you see here will not be exact on wedding day.  The flower colors will probably be just a little bit different too for the little vases.

Personal opinion:  If your florist is not willing to show you a mockup of your centerpiece idea at *NO* extra charge, hire a new florist!  How can you possibly be sure your vision is being communicated well, you understand what they are planning, you know what the flower colors will look like with your linens, etc if you do not get to see a full mockup?  It was an absolute must for me and something I asked about when interviewing florists and made sure was in our contract!

Here was our inspiration for our centerpiece:

And here is the first mockup...Oh, I forgot to mention trying not to focus on the background shelvings and that wire stand in the back left corner :)

The 'tall' centerpiece

Yes, those are my actual linens I asked the caterer to loan me.  So now you can see the colors a little more realistically...turquoise tablecloths with cranberry napkins - both in satin. 

Here's a close up of the inside of the tall tapered vase...there is a Floralyte that is attached to the bottom of the top piece that will light up the vase (hard to see with the lights on in this pic)

Here's a close up of the little votive candles I got over at http://www.quickcandles.com/ Super cheap!  144 red votive glass holders with 144 candles for about $90 total.

Oh, see that little silver bell in the front of the picture?  That will also be on each table with a little card in it...more to come on what that's for in a future post :)

Here's another shot of it showing my luminary table numbers in the frames along with the little takeout favor boxes that will be placed at the top of each guest's napkins.  The napkins will all have a card tucked into it with each guest's name sticking out at the top so they know which seat is theirs. 

We didn't like that when you are sitting down at the table you can see the little floralyte at the top of the vase, so we collectively came up with the idea to wrap a thick turquoise ribbon at the top of the vase to hide it.  Allison found one in her shop that matches my linen color well and offered to do this for me.  We actually all loved it and thought it made the centerpiece even more unique.

So what are we changing about this piece?  I didn't like how there was a large amount of 'green leaves' in the center of all the tulips.  It just didn't look quite right to me.  So we decided that we will trim down the tulips just a bit.  We don't want it to look too bare, but we also want the focus to be on the tulips.  We are also going to have them hang over and drop down just a little bit more rather than standing so tall at the very top.

In the middle of our meeting, it started to hail!  So I just had to run outside and snap a quick shot of the ground as this rarely ever happens in So Cal:

Next up, our alternating centerpiece.  This is technically the 'low' centerpiece that will go on 10 of the 20 tables, but I don't like calling it the low centerpiece because it's really not that low at all:

I absolutely love this one!  The simple tulips submerged in a tall vase...gorgeous!  There are red gems at the bottom of the vase...did I mention my florist is letting us use all of these vases, gems, floralytes, etc at *NO* rental charge or delivery fee to us?  My coordinator offered to deliver them all back to her shop for us the day after the wedding (they work together often) and so it saved us the delivery charge.

See that little 'orange' colored dahlia in front of the vase?  It's called a satellite flower...it means you have one little flower scattered around the table surrounding the large focal point.  We are going to actually change it to a burgundy colored dahlia like this:

She originally had a red gerber daisy in there but I wasn't loving the look of the daisy or the color red.  So I asked her about a dahlia and we all loved it better.  We are also adding two more so there will be three of them scattered around the large vase.

What else are we changing about this centerpiece?  She is going to use a vase that is just a little bit wider and put 5 or 6 tulips in them instead of just the 4 shown here.

Above is a little close up of our table numbers on the linen...I used the same graphic from our wedding invites and the same turquoise and cranberry colors in them.  The only thing I can't seem to figure out is how to get rid of that little 'shadow' of the rim of the votive candle inside it that is showing???

Above is a close up of the napkin with the favor box.  Again, the colors are horrid!  Too orangey in the pic.  I am going to find a better satin ribbon to match the linens for the takeout box as the one I have is an aqua ribbon that doesn't match well.  But I love the tag we made and the pretty colors!

Above is one of the children's favor boxes...it is a circus shaped box from Bailey's Boxes.  Inside are all the little goodies I posted about here that we are gifting the little ones at the wedding.

And finally, for our cocktail area centerpieces, we are thinking of using some small vases with some daisies, tulips or little orchids submerged as well similar to these images below:

So there you have it.  With a few tweaks, come wedding day I think they'll look great.  But would love some feedback and opinions as well.  Is there something I am missing?  Do you have photos to share about your inspiration for your florals or centerpieces?  Is your florist providing you a mockup before the wedding to see what it will look like come wedding day?

I can do it! And I *LOVE* it!

I just have to give a shout out to Gonna Be His Mrs. over at Shooting for a $3,000 Wedding for her recent post on something fabulous! 

She shared a DIY project she found via Martha Stewart that she is considering for a centerpiece idea.  Now just last night I was facebook chatting with my coordinator trying to show her the ideas I had for my table numbers (markers).  I wasn't overly thrilled with any of them but knew I wanted something with a picture of us on it and something somewhat different.

These were some of the ideas I shared with Amanda from In the Now Weddings:

  

These are all great ideas but I just wasn't in love with them.  Then I saw the following idea over at Gonna Be His Mrs.' blog:

                                 

As soon as I saw it, I thought "Man, I can put pictures and a table number in that and it will be totally different, pretty and compliment the place setting which will already have tall floral arrangements with simple votives around it.  And so on my way home from work, I stopped at the Dollar Tree and bought 3 frames for $1 each and grabbed a pack of vellum paper at Michael's.  Here's what I quickly printed off my computer in 4x6 sizes for the frames:

The little graphics on the table number image are from our invitations and will be incorporated throughout the wedding.  I was trying to think of how to include them on the tables and this is the perfect way!

FYI:  The little glare/flash you see in the center only shows up like that in the pictures.  The actual mockup just has this gorgeous flickering light and no glare like that :)

I had the mockup sitting on my table when my 20 something girls showed up for bible study and they all fell in love with it, too.  They said they had never seen anything like it and it was a great idea.

So thanks to my fellow blogger friend for sharing a fantastic idea!  (swoon)  So tell me what you think ladies.  And what is something you found on a blog that you just had to do/have for yourself?