Wedding seating chart etiquette: who sits where

Where the couple, parents, wedding party, children and difficult relatives go — and what to do when the traditional answer does not fit your family.

Head table or sweetheart table?

A sweetheart table seats the two of you alone. It is the easier choice: it removes every question about who is important enough to sit beside you, and it is the only twenty minutes of the day you will get to yourselves. The trade-off is that your wedding party is seated elsewhere and you may feel separated from them.

Where parents sit

The traditional arrangement gives each set of parents a table near the couple, hosting grandparents, close family and the officiant. Some couples combine both families onto one parents' table, which works when the families already know each other and creates a long evening when they do not.

Divorced or remarried parents

Give each parent their own table with their own partner and their own supporters. Do not seat divorced parents together as a gesture toward the family you wish you had — it puts the most visible table in the room under strain, in front of everyone, on a day nobody wants to remember for that. Both tables can be equally close to you; proximity is what reads as status, not which side of the room.

The rest of the room

A kids' table works from roughly age five to twelve, and only if it is within sight of the parents. Under five, seat the child with their parents. Over twelve, ask — a fourteen-year-old put at the kids' table will remember it, and so will you.

Children

Two people who should not sit together

Seat them in the same room, at different tables, ideally not facing each other. The instinct to put them as far apart as physically possible is usually visible to everyone, including them. Different tables in the same half of the room is enough distance and reads as ordinary.