In Spotlight: Our Seat Plan

Wow!  I received a few queries today about our seat plan.  It seems that my sisters at Weddings at Work (or the famous W@W) liked and have adopted my idea of a seat plan and have sent their inquiries to Joy of the Monogram Hub.

Their common question was:  Where did we print the seat plan?

We had ours printed in a plain tarpaulin by our neighbor who has a small printing shop business.  We initially wanted it to be in a poster paper but it’ll make us P2,000 poorer, and we don’t even have plans of keeping it afterwards.   So we had it printer tested in a tarpaulin (which is 10x cheaper than the poster printing) and the result was amazing!

Here’s a close-up photo of our seat plan (c/o Nat Lamano), printed on a tarpaulin:

To make it stand on an easel (lent to us by Hizon’s Catering), my dad bought a big illustration board where he glued the tarpaulin in (I think he used a rugby).   The edges were sealed at the back with a thick masking tape.    It was an easy job.

Here’s our seat plan in action:

To those who plan to have a seat plan like this for their wedding guests, here are some tips so you would save on cost and effort:

1.   Do an RSVP follow-up.  Why?   Because unlike in escort cards where only one name is written on each card, the seat plan contains all the names of your guests and it’ll not look good to have so many names of those not attending, while those who belatedly decided to attend are missing in the list (this will give you a problem in the seating arrangement too).   Doing an  RSVP follow-up at least 2 weeks before the wedding will give you more or less a final set of attendees.

2.   Have a worksheet template for the seat plan ready.   You can do this in MS Excel.   And although your list may be tentative at first, I highly suggest you start the list with your guests’ complete names, so you won’t cram later in finding out their family names to complete the seat plan lay-out [remember, the guests’ names are arranged alphabetically].    Also, a seat plan in excel is very flexible, you can easily delete and add rows as your guest confirm their attendance.   [Note:  finalizing the seat plan can be tedious and stressful too with the adjustments you have to make as guests  send their regrets days before the wedding or confirm proxies instead.    So extend your patience.]

3.   The  nearer the printing shop is to your neighborhood, the better.   There might be  last minute changes in your guest list after your seat plan has been printed.   Rushing to the printer shop won’t be much of a hassle then if it is just within your vicinity.

4.    Do a test print.   It will give you an actual prototype of your seat plan and will let you know if adjustments have to be made on the design or color.   In our case, we asked sis Joy to lighten the green background more because in the initial study it was a bit darker.    That’s why I recommend that you print  the seat plan in a tarpaulin only so you can do as many print test as you like.

5.   Be creative.   You can choose to hang the tarpaulin instead of gluing it with an illustration board.   You can also use standees, if you want to split the guest list into two.

I hope these help.   Good luck on your seat plan!