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"In a recent meeting, our very own Engagement Chick mentioned she and her husband-to-be planned to skip the seating chart at their upcoming wedding. I tried to keep my hands folded on my lap and not say anything (it&amp;amp;#8217;s her wedding, after all), but that lasted about 38 seconds. &amp;amp;#8220;You have to have a seating chart!&amp;amp;#8221; I yelled, rather dramatically. And Engagement Chick was kind enough to sit there and smile politely while I went through my tirade.I can&amp;amp;#8217;t believe this is the stuff I have to worry about. Here are my thoughts: People&amp;amp;#8212;especially older guests&amp;amp;#8212;like to be told what to do. If your guests have been to a hundred other weddings and picked up a handy little seating card, they&amp;amp;#8217;re going to be confused when they can&amp;amp;#8217;t find one at yours. And it&amp;amp;#8217;s hard enough to get people to sit when they know where they&amp;amp;#8217;re going. If your main goal is to get through dinner and speeches and get to the dancing and drinking, you don&amp;amp;#8217;t want people to waste time milling about. People don&amp;amp;#8217;t naturally divide into groups of eight to 12. They naturally divide into groups of childhood friends, great aunts, co-workers, etc. Chances are you&amp;amp;#8217;ll have 20 college friends squeezed around one table while your five co-workers spread out at another. My friend Leslie was at a wedding where seating wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t assigned, and she and her husband sat at a table all by themselves! On that note, if you don&amp;amp;#8217;t have assigned tables, you&amp;amp;#8217;ll probably need extras. Since people will likely divide into smaller groups, you&amp;amp;#8217;ll need more tables to accommodate everyone. That means buying extra centerpieces. And depending on your venue, you may have to pay for extra tables, extra chairs, and extra place settings, too. If you plan your seating chart, you can help everyone feel included. We purposely seated older guests and people less likely to dance around the dance floor. We knew our friends would dance no matter where they were sitting, so they would clear out the outskirts. There was so much dancing going on that the older people felt inclined to get in on the action (since they were basically in the middle of it). If left to their own devices, they probably would have seated themselves in a corner. And they probably would have stayed there all night. People like having somewhere to leave their stuff. I don&amp;amp;#8217;t know what it is about that tiny little piece of cardstock that gives people a sense of security, but if I have a card telling me I&amp;amp;#8217;m supposed to be at table 12, I have no problem leaving my purse and pashmina at table 12. I was at a wedding recently though where tables weren&amp;amp;#8217;t assigned, and people kept getting up and switching tables&amp;amp;#8212;so I wound up carrying my stuff around with me all night. And you know what, it&amp;amp;#8217;s hard to dance when you have a drink, a wrap, and an over-size clutch. I&amp;amp;#8217;m a dance-at-weddings kinda gal, but I don&amp;amp;#8217;t think I danced at all at this wedding. (And neither did a lot of other people.) So those are my arguments. I think I was able to convince Engagement Chick. But she may have just been nodding and pretending to agree with me out of fear. Do you think a seating chart helps everything flow better? Have any of you been guests at a wedding where seating wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t assigned? How&amp;amp;#8217;d the night go? More reader&amp;amp;#8217;s dilemmas, solved! * &amp;amp;#8220;Help! I&amp;amp;#8217;m in a Serious Funk!&amp;amp;#8221; * Have You Ever Had a Pregnancy Scare? * &amp;amp;#8220;Um, My Boyfriend&amp;amp;#8217;s Parents Walk Around Half-Naked. Weird?&amp;amp;#8221; More Ways to Get Glamour You could win $50,000 just for registering or logging in to Glamour.com! Sign up for Glamour.com&amp;amp;#8217;s Style Tips of the Week and Beauty Tip of the Day newsletters! Add Glamour to your iGoogle homepage. Follow Glamour on Twitter. Photo: Jupiter Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/weddings/blogs/save-the-date/2009/12/readers-dilemma-help-can-i-ski>