Wedding Forum - Table Planning?!!! A LOT HARDER THAN IT...

I'm 22, and my partner is 40, therefore with the age gap, there is a wide range of different aged guests.
My partner doesn't have much family (as in no Mum or Dad, Brothers, Sisters etc attending. - just his 8yo son who is page boy)
I have my Mum and Dad coming, 2 (possibly 3) Bridesmaids.. So who would sit at the top table (and in what order if you coud help with that)?

The kids table is sorted, that was easy enough.

He has mostly friends coming, whereas I have friends and family.
I want to mix it up a bit, so people can mingle and get to know each other, and not just have people sitting with people they know. But then I don't want people to sit with a bunch of people they don't know.
I don't want all the older ones sitting together, nor all the younger ones.

I'm really struggling trying to get a table plan together.. I've made several attempts, but nothing seems to work.

Just really need a bit of advise on how to start, or how others worked out how to arrange people?

i found this technique great, you can start putting people and then when you get to more difficult to place, can easily change it around x

we mixed everyone up and to break the ice and get them talking we put a small "all about us " quiz on the tables ... people are grown ups and they are able to chat to people the dont know .

asto the top table why have a traditional one ? we didn't ...we had my children ( all grown up) and the two people who had come with us to USA on ours then my parents hosted their own table

Were having people who we want on our top table, I doo not fancy sitting in a table with his parents and although he gets on with my mum is not exactly his dream seating ideas, so are having his parents and my mum hosting there own tables.

If he has no parents, I would just put his son and your parents and the best man, as I don't think it's fair overfilling the top table with your family. I would put the bridesmaids on their own tables with partners etc x

The technique pictured above is exactly what I did when doing the table plan.

We decided to keep people who knew each other together as we wanted our guests to be comfortable and have a good time.

We had this issue to begin with, not everyone gets on was our problem. So we started by separating those that don't get on and decided to sit people with who they are most comfortable and on the evening we are going to try different things to get people to mix. Just having myself and H2B on top table and 2 2 seater kids tables either side for our youngest members of our wedding oarty

I say just sit people where you want them to sit and if they have a problem with it, well, that's their problem not yours and they should be adult and mature enough to just shut up and get on with it for the sake of one special day!!!! xx

We started with the top table, with both sets of parents, two best men, and two MOHs. We couldn't really have all bridesmaids or all siblings, as there were two many. We had a table near us for siblings from both families and their partners and children, and another one for all the late teens and early twenties to sit together. The remaining bridesmaids were covered on those two tables. Otherwise there were some obvious groupings, like two families who we knew were close, or people from different sides with similar interests. We worked our way down the guest list putting names down on a spreadsheet in their groups, and then it was easy to move the names around. The difficulty that we had was people dropping out.

Ive tried to sit people around the same age and similar job types on the same table so they have something they might find in common...otherwise i have just sat people with friends that they know :D xx