Online Wedding Table Planner: Make Your Table Plan Free

A table planner is a tool that turns your guest list into a table plan — the diagram of who sits where at the reception. (If you're used to American wedding blogs: a table plan is the same thing as a seating chart.) Here's how planning your tables online works, and why it beats paper and sticky notes.

Table plan, seating chart, seating plan — same thing

British couples and venues say table plan or seating plan; American ones say seating chart. All of them mean the map of tables with the guest names assigned to each — the thing you print and display at the entrance so guests can find their seats. Whatever your venue calls it, the planning work is identical.

How an online table planner works

• Import your guest list — paste names straight from a spreadsheet instead of retyping them
• Lay out your tables — rounds, long banquet tables, a top table, or a U-shape, each with its real capacity
• Set the rules — keep couples together, keep two feuding relatives apart, pin the head table seats
• Arrange — drag guests into seats, or let the planner auto-arrange and then fine-tune by hand
• Print — export the finished plan by table or alphabetically for the display board

Why not paper or a spreadsheet?

A paper plan is fixed the moment you draw it — and table plans are never fixed. RSVPs trickle in late, a couple splits up, an aunt can't sit near her ex. Online, a change is one drag; the planner keeps couples together when you move someone and warns you if two keep-apart guests land at the same table. A spreadsheet tracks names but knows none of those rules — the comparison is in our seating chart maker guide.

Gather is a free online table planner: no account, no download — your plan lives in your browser. Start your table plan with up to 20 guests free.

Who sits where on the plan

The layout software is the easy half; the politics are the hard half. For the traditional rules — top table order, parents' tables, grouping guests so nobody sits with strangers — start with who sits where at a wedding and who sits at the head table. To work out how many tables you even need, see how many tables for a wedding.