<p>
</p>
<p>Hee Hee - it’s only just begun - white lace and promises - a kiss for luck and the bills to pay - da da da da da daaaa</p>
<p>Best to luck to everyone!</p>
<p>I prefer assigned tables. I made a real effort to put people together that had similar interests or backgrounds even if they didn’t know each other as well as putting friends together. In my experience, most people do a pretty good job. I go to quite a few weddings for my husband’s grad students and I never know anyone there well.</p>
<p>Hopefully no one will decide a striptease or a screaming match is a must-do on the dance floor. :eek:</p>
<p>We had the mother of the bride over for supper last night. What a nice lady. We needed a burst of energy and she nicely jumped into the work and helped greatly. Of course, then the groom-to-be called and said his car broke down enroute back from the airport with another groomsman. Great. I’m trying to get them to trade the junker and buy a new car before they leave for the honeymoon.</p>
<p>We started a forced savings plan when we found we could not bribe the couple into eloping. We’ve paying cash.</p>
<p>^^ While she hasn’t yet done an actual striptease our family has our own aunt who ALWAYS gets drunk and tries to make out with her nephews.</p>
<p>^^Ok, I feel better about Mavis and the other minor weirdness already. :)</p>
<p>p2n, Congratulations! Enjoy the special day!</p>
<p>
I must say that after the hours that the we and the bride’s family spent arranging the tables the way we thought would make people happy, I would have been quite annoyed had someone taken it upon themselves to rearrange. I can’t imagine we did such a horrible job that it would have ruined anybody’s evening to just eat dinner at the table we assigned. </p>
<p>No wonder people dread hosting weddings these days.</p>
<p>3bm103, I agree with you. Not only would I have been annoyed, but it would have interfered with the caterer’s staff as well, as I mentioned. I don’t think it’s too much to ask people to sit where they’re assigned for a couple of hours. Certainly, after the dinner people can mingle and move around all they want, for the rest of the evening.</p>
<p>We paid over $2,500 to go to the wedding (not to mention the agony of clothes shopping for appropriate attire for D2, who HATES to shop…). Since I had to take my elderly in-laws and D2 back to the hotel shortly after the dinner was over, I didn’t get to mingle as much as I would have liked (and groom is in the music business, so it would have been hard to talk over the band anyway!).</p>
<p>I don’t buy that your guests aren’t capable of making their own choices on where to sit. This is a perfect example of people making work for themselves “just in case” something goes wrong. The caterer issue can be resolved by giving your guests with a special menu request something they can hand the waiter/waitress that identifies themselves for their special meal. I figure I will have plenty of other tasks when my Ds get married, this one won’t be on my list.</p>
<p>People ARE more complicated than you think. So you probably have no idea what most of them would really prefer for dinner companions. And often there are many people who are invited that you don’t know that well (eg, distant relatives, people on the grooms side you have only met once or twice), so how can you even make a judgement? Just an aside, though, I think many women (and I am female) like the “relationship” aspect of the seating chart (it is kind of like a game based on gossip – these two don’t get along, that one has a drinking problem, etc.).</p>
<p>Um…it’s not just a matter of special meals. There are 2 appetizer and 3 entree choices for my kid’s wedding. The guests will be seated at tables. The servers know that table 4 with 10 people sitting at it will need 3 of choice one, 2 of choice 2, and 5 of choice 3. Switch your place and the likely outcome is that the person whose name tag you switched will have no idea what happened and will be most annoyed with the server who brought him/her the wrong appetizer, entree, and dessert.</p>
<p>intparent, I understand that it can be costly to attend an out of town wedding. Everyone has to make the decision for themselves if it is worth it to them to be able to share that special day with the bride and groom. We actually paid for all of our out of town guests but I realize that not everyone is able to do that. As for the meals, it isn’t that simple. Menu plans were sent with the invitations so that guests could choose between four different options for EACH course. The caterer got the final orders and the seating chart a week ahead of the wedding. They use that so that the servers can make sure that everyone gets exactly what they ordered and so that the delivery of the dinner is seamless in the course of speeches, etc.</p>
<p>When my D and her fiance prepared the seating chart for their wedding last year, they spent a lot of time deciding who would sit where. It wasn’t a matter of making work for themselves “just in case”, it was a matter of making an interesting and pleasant evening for everyone. As I said, we had no special seating requests and no issues with family conflicts, but they still tried to make up tables of 8 people who would enjoy themselves. It worked. To be honest, I’ve never attended a wedding where there wasn’t a seating chart for the dinner. I think there’s probably a reason for that! :)</p>
<p>The bottom line is that it’s the bride and groom’s day and it’s a shame if a guest feels that they have the right to alter the plans of the bride and groom in any way to suit their own desires, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Jonri–did you ask your guests to make choices when they sent in RSVPs?</p>
<p>bromfield, I don’t know about jonri, but that’s what we did, yes. A menu card accompanied the invitation.</p>
<p>The “kids” did–they are planning everything. They used the wedding software. While a few folks mailed in responses which also asked you to choose, most used the website. If you clicked that you were attending the reception, it asked you to make the necessary choices. Menu is spelled out in very great detail on the website.</p>
<p>For a wedding that is catered where you gave your guests menu choices all the way through the menu, I concede the point. But this wedding (which surely cost more than both of my kids college educations combined!) did not have menu choices. In fact, I don’t think I have been to one that has… I have been to many corporate or club events where there was an entree choice, and you just got a different colored card you put at your place so the wait staff knew what to give you. And I have been to many weddings where the food was buffet style.</p>
<p>Maybe this is a regional or “social status” difference. My family and friends generally could not afford to pay the travel expenses of out of town guests, especially to New York City. I have been to quite a few weddings here in the midwest (in a fairly large city), and don’t recall having “assigned seating” at any of them. I’m sure there are some, of course.</p>
<p>Actually, the most charming wedding I ever went to was my other nephew’s (brother of the one initially described) that was held outside in an aspen grove outside the bride’s moms house in the mountains. Food made by family and friends, only wine served at the reception (by the father of the groom). The groom cried when he said his vows because he was so emotional about marrying this girl he loved so much. Reminded me that the wedding isn’t about the food and the band…</p>
<p>Wow, all these menu choices. It’s a wedding; not the Iron Chef. KISS the menu and let the couple and the guests have fun.<br>
Too much effort being put into trying to impress.
I agree with the folks who say go to the judge or elope and then have a simple dinner party later.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Oh, that’s right… That was the ultimate reason that we did this. Our caterer required that we tell them, ahead of time, the number of each entree that would be at each table. Since we were offering a kids’ meal and a vegetarian meal as options, our guests had to choose their options on their reply cards, and we were strong-armed into assigning seats and giving everyone’s meal choices to our caterer, lest we be required to sort everyone by dietary habits.</p>
<p>So, there are a lot of things that end up necessitating seat assignments. I’m not particularly fond of being told where to plunk my keister, but I’ll dutifully park where I’m told because I know it’s not usually about the bride being a control freak.</p>
<p>Personally, I wouldn’t have minded a whit if someone had gotten up to move-- I was happy to make an attempt to oblige the caterer, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have been the first time that they had been forced to improvise. (I was more irritated when I was told that one of the waitresses had snootily informed a group of my friends that they weren’t allowed to open their wedding favors or touch the dinner rolls until she told them they could… Step off, lady, it’s a party!!)</p>
<p>Folks, why judge the wedding choices? Each family can plan the wedding that is appropriate for them and their budget.</p>
<p>I agree though, that it is not a good idea to start rearranging the seating chart. When one plans a wedding, by all means, forgo seating assignments. But if one attends another’s wedding, one should graciously go along with the hosts’ wishes.</p>
<p>aibarr–that’s funny! The bride certainly wasn’t the control freak; it was the waitress! Amazing!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Packers,</p>
<p>It had nothing to do with trying to impress. There was no need to impress the guests who attended. It was a group of 70 close friends and family members who all were very important in the bride’s and the groom’s lives. They were either impressed or not impressed long before the wedding day! 
This was how the chosen venue and caterer handle their weddings, and it was an opportunity to have each guest have a chance to truly choose something that they would like, and helped a few who had dietary restrictions.</p>
<p>The beauty of weddings is that kids have the choice of determining what they want their special day to be like. We’ve been to probably 8 weddings in the past couple of years and each and every one of them was quite different. It was fun, and instructive, to see how each family handled it. I hope your children are amenable to the suggestion to elope. I know lots of dads who have made that suggestion, but know not a one who has been taken up on the offer!</p>