How Much Time Should a Wedding Table Plan Take You?

How long should it take you to create a wedding table plan? Half an hour? An hour? There is a reason at all why creating a wedding table plan should take you much longer than this, but unfortunately for many people the process of creating their table plan not only takes significantly longer, but it can eventually become one of the most dominant parts of planning the entire wedding.

Let me ask an entirely different question. How long should it take you to pass your driving test? The practical test itself usually lasts little more than half an hour to 40 minutes, but clearly there is a good deal more to the process than the actual practical exam. A very great deal of preparation and planning needs to go into preparing for the test itself.

To some extent the same is true when it comes to creating your wedding table plan. Just as if you turned up to the exam centre, popped into a car and ferried a driving instructor around the block for half an hour you'd be unlikely to receive your driving licence, sitting down with a piece of paper and a pen and hoping to come up with a successful table plan without any prior consideration is unlikely to result in a successful table plan.

There are several things it's important to do or to think about before you even get close to sitting down with a pen and paper. For example, how much information do you really know about the venue? Do you know the dimensions of the room? Do you know where the entrances and exits are? Do you know what shape the tables are going to be, and how many tables you have available? Do you know where the toilets are? Do you know where the speakers will be?

If you think that's a lot of questions to start thinking about, then prepare yourself. Because those questions represent just the very beginning. Once you've understood the venue, it's important to make sure that you also understand your guests. Specifically it's important to understand whether there are any disabilities or special needs, since some people will need to be fairly close to the toilets, and some people may need to have a little extra room, or be close to the entrance or exit.

It is important to appreciate the sheer range and volume of questions and aspects which you need to consider even before you begin creating a wedding table plan, because the idea of trying to take on board all of this information and transferring it successfully to paper within the space of half an hour would be optimistic even for an international chess champion.

In fact today the most successful wedding table plans only end up on paper at the very end of the process. The preparation, juggling, rearranging and general sorting out takes place within a computer. We're fortunate today to be able to take advantage of the speed and simplicity which computers can bring to even everyday tasks such as creating a successful wedding table plan.

If you're thinking about how much time to allow for creating your wedding table plan, make sure you allow at least a few extra minutes at the very beginning of the process so that you can check out the various computer based tools and facilities which you can take advantage of.

Toptableplanner is an online tool that can help you arrange and create a successful wedding table plan in no time at all. There's even a free trial on the website so you can try it out first. We've also put together a range of ideas for making wedding table plans that you might display at your venue.

Creating Wedding Table Plans For International Chess Champions

I had dinner with a friend who's about to get married, and had an interesting conversation about wedding table plans. Towards the end of the meal I asked him if he was going to be doing anything towards the wedding later that evening. He explained that he did have plans, and when I asked what exciting things he was looking forward to sorting out he explained that it was his intention to start, and to complete, the entire wedding table plan that evening after dinner.

To be perfectly honest I wasn't sure what to say, but certainly I thought to myself that this was extraordinarily optimistic. Normally my friend is a very practical sort of person, very down-to-earth and realistic. But the problem is that as with so many people, it's his first time getting married. As such he has no prior experience of what it actually takes to create wedding table plans.

I wasn't sure whether to reveal to him my own experiences or those of so many other people I've spoken to who have been through the same hell. Clearly I didn't want to spoil his enthusiasm but on the other hand I felt I had a duty to at least find out more so that I might be able to help point him in the right direction. So I asked him how he was planning to go about creating his wedding table plan.

He explained that he was going to sit down with a piece of paper and a pen, possibly a ruler as well, draw out a plan of the room as he remembered it, draw in a few tables, and then add people's names in reasonably suitable positions. I bit my tongue although the temptation was to laugh out loud on the assumption that he was pulling my leg. He wasn't. He was entirely serious.

In my experience this kind of approach would be a little like sitting down with an international chess champion and planning out how to beat them by spending 5 or 10 minutes with a piece of paper jotting down a few possible moves.

Of course if you happen to be in international chess champion then creating wedding table plans is going to be as easy as, well, playing chess against one of the most powerful computers in the world. But if you're the sort of person who is still struggling to get to level 3 on that Snake game that came free on your mobile phone, then when it comes to creating wedding table plans you may need a little extra help.

There are so many factors which need to be taken into consideration about both the room and every single one of your guests, and although there may be very many successful ways in which you can seat your guests, there are many more ways in which you could seat your guests in ways which are likely to be rather less successful.

Unless you happen to have an international chess champion to hand, several spare reams of paper and a box of pens then it may well be worth looking into the possibility of using computer power in addition to brainpower. Computer based tools for creating wedding table plans are now one of the most popular ways of tackling this aspect of planning a wedding.

Toptableplanner is an online tool that can help you arrange wedding table plans in no time at all. Just drag and drop your guests and tables around the screen until you've created the perfect plan.

Wedding Table Plans - Pens and Paper Versus Pretty Pixels

Traditionally wedding table plans have been created by using old fashioned pen and paper. Sketching out the room, drawing in the tables and then adding the names is a traditional way of creating wedding table plans. Just as crumpling the plan up in a ball, chucking it in the bin and starting again is a tradition. Rinse and repeat. Lots.

But today we have the advantage of technology, with super slick software, cunning computerised routines and marvellous graphics that let us fling our friends and relatives around the virtual room with reckless abandon. One handed if you wish.

But when it comes right down to creating wedding table plans, which is better - pencils or pixels? Graphite or silicon? Manual labour or digital representation?

The chances are that if you're pretty familiar with computers you'll plump for a computer based solution, whereas if you're the sort of person that sees a computer as a monstrous box that's just waiting to eat you alive the moment you even think about touching its floppy drive or taking its mouse for a wander, then you'll probably feel happiest sticking with the old quill and parchment.

The main two arguments for pen and paper are that you can easily scribble out, doodle and draw arrows and lines quickly and easily in just the same way your mind works. many computer based solutions can be rather rigid and inflexible, making it less easy to work in the random way in which the human mind sometimes works.

The other benefit of pen and paper is that you can pretty much take it anywhere you go. If you're on the bus, or having a coffee in town you can pull out a pen and paper from your pocket or bag as easily as you like. Your computer is much less convenient in that respect.

But computer based solutions have advantages too, and it's worth considering them even if you tend to find light switches a little daunting, especially if they're as fiddly and complex as a double dimmer circuit switch with a chrome faceplate.

First of all, computers allow you to make an unlimited number of changes, both minor and major, without having to scrap everything, screw it up in a ball and hurl it into the bin. A computer also allows you to click and drag items around on the screen in a way that gives you a much more immediate, accurate and visual representation of the layout of the room.

Some computer based wedding table plans provide the ability to upload the list of wedding guest names and then just click and drag them to their seats, as well as dragging people around with a single click until you've got it right, as well as being able to save your wedding table plan at any time, as well as being able to access it from any computer in the world with internet access, as well as being able to generate formatted wedding table plans for display, as well as creating place name cards for all your guests.

But of course, those benefits are secondary to the fact that a pencil gives you a great weapon to use to stab the crumpled ball of paper after you've given up on your fiftieth draft.

If you're looking for help arranging table plans for weddings, Toptableplanner could be just the answer you're looking for. It takes no time at all to add you guests and tables and create the ideal table plan. There's a free trial so you can see how it works first and you can even print your own place cards using a range of compatible stationery.