Seating chart generator

Paste your guest list, say who has to sit together and who has to stay apart, and Tablecharm generates the whole arrangement. Not a template to fill in, and not a blank canvas. An actual answer to the question of who sits where.

How it works

1. 1

   Paste the guest list

   One name per line, straight from a spreadsheet or your notes app. Mark a child with (kid) and it is seated accordingly. No formatting to learn, no template to fill in.

2. 2

   Describe your tables

   How many, and how many seats each. Rounds, rectangles, a head table, a sweetheart table. The arithmetic of what fits where is the generator's problem, not yours.

3. 3

   Write the rules in plain language

   Who must sit together, who must be kept apart. These are the only two rules that matter and almost every real seating problem is made of them.

4. 4

   Generate

   Every guest gets a seat. You get a poster, place cards and an escort list, ready to print.

When two rules cannot both be true

This is the part most tools stay quiet about, so here it is plainly. Sometimes what you have asked for is impossible. A group of twelve will not fit a table of ten. Two people you want apart both have to sit with the same third person. Something has to give.

Tablecharm tells you which rule it could not honour and why, rather than silently breaking one and letting you find out at the reception. You then decide: move a table, split a group, or accept it. The generator is doing the arithmetic, but the judgement stays yours.

Generating again when the list changes

It will change. Declines arrive late, plus ones appear, a table gets added. Regenerating takes seconds, which is the real argument for a generator over an evening with sticky notes: the first arrangement is not the expensive one, the fourth is.