<p>Just a daydream here, but it seems things might liven up if we actually sat “Aunt Mavis” WITH the kids (when she specifically asked not be located near the offspring) and intentionally planned other family faux pas. Would the world really end? 
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<p>Anyone ever get close to this?</p>
<p>Saturday it all ends! :)</p>
<p>Good luck with it all! I did get close to what you are describing, and refused to go to any lengths to separate the warring factions of groom’s family. Somehow, they all rose to the occasion and there wasn’t too much drama!</p>
<p>Congrats and have a great day! We’ll be waiting for the play by play next week.</p>
<p>I don’t think it matters who far apart you seat them. If they’re all in the same room at the same time, sparks can fly :)</p>
<p>LOL! Glad it is not only our family. We had a similar Aunt Mavis request for a family event and we complied. It meant redoing some tables…grrrrhhh! Still, I am happy that we complied with the request because we really like our Aunt Mavis. I know that Aunt Mavis was grateful.</p>
<p>Saturday … it all BEGINS… </p>
<p>Congratulations. Enjoy the day!</p>
<p>Except at the table where the wedding party sits, I hate weddings where I am told where to sit. At a ritzy NY wedding for a nephew a couple of years ago, my extremely shy 12 year old D was seated with complete strangers way across the restaurant at the groom’s dinner. Fortunately one of my seatmates never showed, so she came and sat by me. Before the wedding dinner, I wandered into the room and found our name tags (out of about 400!), and swapped so my 2 Ds and I were at a table with some long time friends. All of us had traveled a long way for the wedding from separate locations, and we thought it would be A LOT more fun to sit with these friends who we almost never see in person than strangers (and there were 3 women we didn’t know who were also at our table, all of whom knew each other and sniped about the quality of the filet mignon during the meal). And we had a great time. We won’t have placecards with names at my D’s weddings, everyone coming knows who they want to sit with better than I do. If not, they can look for some friendly-looking strangers (believe me, I wouldn’t have picked those sniping women as table mates on my own!).</p>
<p>Fortunately, we didn’t have any special seating requests. My D and her fiance made up the seating chart and they put a lot of thought into it. Everyone seemed to have a good time with their table-mates. 
At the venue we chose, a seating chart was required to be submitted ahead of time for the caterer so that the servers knew who had ordered which meal.</p>
<p>parent2, take the time to enjoy every minute of Saturday. After all these months of planning, the day will fly by, trust me. Congrats and best wishes all around.</p>
<p>Everybody should just run off to Vegas. Seriously. After seeing the drama around my sister’s simple wedding, which consisted of lunch for 20 and standing up in front of a judge at the restaurant, I’ve become a proponent of elopements.</p>
<p>We had Aunt Mavis and Uncle Moshe. The wedding couple agreed that only immediate family would be invited. Mavis & Moshe threw a fit and insisted that they be allowed to come. The groom caves and invites M&M. (While the bride’s family worries about what OUR uninvited aunts and uncles will think when they see M&M in the pictures). M&M then pitch a fit over the restaurant not being kosher. The bride pays extra money for kosher meals to be brought in and kosher waiters to serve M&M. M&M then pitch another fit because their son isn’t invited. The groom puts his foot down – no cousins. M&M grumble.</p>
<p>On the wedding day, the small party gathers at the restaurant – no M&M. We wait 45 minutes, and they don’t show up. Finally, we have to start the ceremony because the judge has Knicks tickets and has to leave soon. M&M walk in during the middle of the ceremony, a full hour late. (The wedding was in Manhattan, and M&M have lived in Queens their entire lives.) I was tempted to slip some bacon into their ruinously expensive, specially ordered kosher meals.</p>
<p>Yeah, eloping is the way to go.</p>
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I hate wedding where I’m not told where to sit. I find most people do a very good job of seating like people together. Makes it more enjoyable.</p>
<p>At my wedding, I stuck mootmom with my in-laws. </p>
<p>I think my biggest headache was trying to split up my group of friends – one friend had been dating another, and they’d gone through a nasty breakup, so I wanted them at different tables, but I didn’t want to make it obvious that I was intentionally keeping them apart.</p>
<p>IMHO, I think Aunt Mavis should shut up and be a gracious guest.</p>
<p>Are the bridesmaids wearing Seminole colors?</p>
<p>You’ll probably not satisfy Aunt Mavis, even if you follow her wishes–there are just some people who will complain no matter what you do.</p>
<p>Good look with it all! </p>
<p>I’ve got 6 more weeks until D1’s day. Where did the time go??? It seemed so far away, 8 months ago when she got engaged.</p>
<p>No…the bride is wearing white. As FoB I am in a tux…and armed with my checkbook. ;)</p>
<p>Mavis belongs to the groom’s family, btw. Might be cheeky of us to ignore her, but could be fun.</p>
<p>Uggh…it’s stories like these that make me dread getting hitched (whenever that may be), although at the same time, a party in my and my future bride’s honor seems like a fun idea ;)</p>
<p>The bottom line, and the thing I try to remember at every wedding I go to is that this is the Bride and Groom’s day…I’m there to help them celebrate, not get upset at the quality of the food or the people I’m sitting by. If I can get a few free drinks out of the arrangement and hopefully see some people I know, that’s great…if not, I’ll quietly slip out early and not worry about it too much.</p>
<p>My guess, P2N, is that you’ll be too wrapped up in other business, worries, dances, and proud moments to notice Mavis that much. Congratulations in advance!</p>
<p>Yes, have a great day! My kid is getting married this summer and has to deal with parents who hate each other’s guts…Mavis would be much easier. </p>
<p>But do respect such wishes…it makes it easier for all concerned.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, sometimes you have to keep Great-Aunt Sadie away from the dance floor or she’ll do a striptease, and you have to keep Uncle Elbert facing away from the open bar because he just got out of rehab. And if your mother-in-law and father-in-law are either one closer to the head table than the other, then they’ll ruin the reception. And your Aunt Penelope can’t sit next to your mom or they’ll scream at each other, but she’ll want to sit next to your Aunt Liza, who you need to sit next to your mom so that your mom doesn’t get into a fight with your dad, her ex-husband. And then there are your high school friends, who you love dearly, but half of whom hate the other half, but the other half doesn’t know.</p>
<p>People are sometimes more complicated than you’d like, and you probably shouldn’t leave seating arrangements to people’s split-second decisions lest apocalyptic-caliber explosions occur. I made sure that everyone sat with at least half people that they knew but hadn’t seen in a long time, and half with people who I knew they’d enjoy sitting with because they either were the same brand of “cool” or had similar interests. (I used to flight all the individual events for our debate tournaments, so this was old hat. Wrote everyone’s names on notecards and sorted the cards out on the carpet 'til it was right. Everyone seemed to have a great time-- I got compliments on my seating arrangements, and I have a fantastic picture of my drama teacher and our Carmelite priest, who had never met before, boogieing out on the dance floor!)</p>
<p>Best wishes on Saturday, p2n! </p>
<p>Re: Aunt Mavis and her ilk: The seating arrangements can be the most challenging part of planning an affair - hosts have generally spent many hours on these and there’s always at least one table that you wish could have worked out better. With exceptions for those untenable family situations where advising the host ahead of time of special circumstances is understandable, it’s really not right for someone to make demands like this and certainly I would never dream of taking it upon myself to change a seating arrangement around on my own. If Mavis has no reason to have to sit elsewhere, and it’s a hassle, maybe you can give a heads up to the groom’s family so they can explain to her why the tables just didn’t work out that way. If she’s easily accomodated or has a compelling reason , you can consider honoring the request. </p>
<p>I usually enjoy weddings regardless of where I’m seated. I like being seated with close friend and family as well as people I’ve never met. At a recent affair, some people complained that friends were all split up. As it turned out, the hosts had put a lot of thought into who sat with whom - we enjoyed getting to know everyone at our table. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way - worst case scenario, it’s a few hours of your life!</p>