Getting Started with The Table Plan

The Table Plan takes you from a raw guest list to a finished, shareable seating plan in a single afternoon. This guide walks through every step in the order that works best, from creating your wedding right through to handing the venue and caterer what they need.

Create your wedding

Sign in at app.thetableplan.com/signup and create a new wedding. Give it your wedding date and venue name - both appear on the exports you will share with your caterer and venue coordinator, so it is worth getting them right from the start.

You can create more than one wedding if you are helping to plan for someone else, and you can return to an in-progress plan as many times as you like before your big day.

Add your guest list

There are two ways to bring your guests in.

Import a CSV file if you already have a spreadsheet or an export from a planning tool such as Zola, The Knot, or Joy. The importer accepts any CSV with a first-name column and picks up last name, household (or party), email, dietary notes, and tags automatically when the headers match - extra columns like RSVP status are simply ignored. See Importing Your Wedding Guest List for the full column reference and household rules.

Enter guests manually if your list is still coming together. Type a first name, last name, and any notes; The Table Plan saves immediately so you never lose a change.

The Table Plan seats the guests on your list, so bring the confirmed attendees you already have (it is a seating tool, not an RSVP tracker). When the numbers change, add or remove guests and the plan and every export update straight away.

Households and groups

Grouping guests into households tells The Table Plan which people arrived together and are most likely to want to sit together - partners, families with children, a group of friends who booked the same hotel. The auto-seater respects these groups when it distributes guests across tables.

You can reassign anyone to a different group at any point, or remove them from a group entirely if they need to be treated as an individual.

Lay out the room

Open the floor plan editor and drag elements onto the canvas to match your venue.

Tables come in round and banquet (rectangular) shapes. Set the number of seats for each table; The Table Plan will track occupancy as you place guests. Round tables typically seat six to twelve guests - eight or ten is the sweet spot for a table that can hold a single conversation without people on opposite sides falling silent. Banquet tables suit barn venues and extended family runs.

Walls and room boundaries let you trace the shape of the venue so the floor plan looks like the actual space. This helps you and your venue coordinator read the plan at a glance rather than having to interpret a grid of floating tables.

Dance floor, stage, and bar areas are available as fixed elements. Placing them accurately matters because guests near the dance floor or speakers often experience the evening differently from those in a quieter corner - factor that in when you decide which guests go where.

Once the layout is saved, you can print a copy of the blank floor plan and bring it to a venue walkthrough. Your coordinator will be able to confirm table positions and flag any access or fire-exit constraints before you lock everything in.

Set your seating rules

Some guests simply cannot sit at the same table - recently divorced parents, relatives who fell out, or an ex-partner and a new partner who have never met. Seating rules let you write those constraints down before you run the auto-seater, so the tool does not undo the social awareness you have spent weeks building.

Rules live with the people they are about. Open Guests, choose the guest, and use the Seating rules section on their record: pick Keep apart or Keep together, choose the other person or household, and press Add rule. Auto-seat follows every rule you set, and each one shows whether it is holding or broken.

A rule does not have to be all or nothing. Different tables is the strict version. Not next to lets two people share a table as long as they are not in neighbouring chairs, which is usually what you want for two guests who are merely awkward together rather than impossible. You can also record who asked for a rule and why, in your own words; that note stays private and never appears on a print, an export or the link you send guests.

Access needs are not rules and do not live here. A guest who needs an aisle seat, step-free access or room for a pram is recorded on their own record under Food and access, so the need travels with the person rather than with one seating decision.

Auto-seat your guests

Once your floor plan is ready and your seating rules are in place, run auto-seat. The tool distributes confirmed guests across your tables, respecting households (keeping groups together), honouring your seating rules, and balancing occupancy so no table is left conspicuously empty.

Auto-seating produces a first draft, not a finished plan. Review the result and move guests around by dragging them between tables - or to a specific seat within a table if you want to control who sits next to whom. Changes are reflected live in the occupancy counts and the floor plan view.

If a table is over its capacity or a seating rule has been broken (for example, because there was no feasible solution without breaking it), The Table Plan flags it so you can resolve it manually.

For the planning theory behind grouping decisions, tricky family dynamics, and top-table arrangements, the wedding seating plan guide covers the full picture.

Export your deliverables

When the plan is settled, export what each person needs.

Venue floor plan - a PDF showing table positions, table names or numbers, and seat counts. Your venue coordinator uses this to set the room on the day.

Caterer's sheet - a list of every guest, their table, and their dietary notes. Your caterer uses this for service, and it doubles as a check against the numbers you submitted when you finalised your menu.

Table plan display - a guest-facing alphabetical list of every name and their assigned table, formatted to print or display on an easel at the entrance to the room. Guests scan this when they arrive and head straight to their table. You can also export individual place cards for each seat if you want to control where people sit within the table.

All exports update automatically when you make changes, so reprinting after a last-minute swap takes seconds rather than requiring a rebuild from scratch.

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Ready to begin? Start your plan, free and have the first draft done today.