Two lessons: Seating charts are hard and perfection is impossible.
By Erika Lynde
Last weekend was our final meeting with our venue…or so we thought. Today I’m learning that perfection is impossible, but dreams can still come true.
It all started with a little thing called a seating chart. Working with CAV has been a dream. Not only is Sylvia extremely kind and cooperative, she also makes us feel like family. We decided in the beginning to opt for free seating. It was something Sylvia suggested and our wedding was already so non-traditional, we thought, ‘why not?’ Less work for us right? Nope.
As the wedding got closer and put together our final guest list, we realized that there could be some seating blunders if we didn’t assign seats. This is so not something we wanted to do last minute but between the kids being there and a few single friends, we didn’t want them all to end up at the same table. That would be awful. So we decided on fully assigned seating just one week before the wedding!
We only booked the front room at CAV, which was perfect for our budget and the number of seats we required. With three tables of ten, four tables of six, one of twelve and (of course) one table for two, we were going to make this work.
When it came to seating our guests and pairing couples, things started as a game for Liam and me. We were full of giggles figuring out who would associate with whom and who would find so-and-so interesting. We were even making up little mock conversations between our guests. It was kind of fun. And just when we thought we had it all perfect — BAM — something was wrong. We’d realize two people wouldn’t mix or someone was alone or we’d find there were too many empty chairs at one table, and so on. Geesh…people are right: It is harder than we thought.
Our mock conversations became little battles but, after numerous excel sheets, our (what seemed endless) hours lead to a final arrangement. [Note I’m not using the word perfect here because, as stated in the beginning, perfection doesn’t exist.] We have to settle. We have to give up and just know we did our best, and that will just have to do. Fingers crossed our guests have fun no matter where they are placed.
All I know is I’m definitely sitting exactly where I want to be: Just me and Liam at that sweetheart table, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.