You start from the people who have already confirmed, not from a list of intentions. Move one name across and the free seats count themselves, at both tables.
The seating plan is built from the guest list, and the list already holds the confirmations. Which means you are not seating somebody who told you a month ago that they might come: you work with the people who said yes. Move somebody from one table to another and the free-seat count changes at both tables immediately — the part that, on paper, gets erased and rewritten ten times.
A seating plan is easy to make once. The real test is five days out, when two families drop out and one asks whether they can bring two more. On paper that would mean redoing everything; here it means moving a few names and seeing where room is left. The totals, the lists and the boards redo themselves from what you changed.
The plan produces the table boards and lists: for the restaurant, so they know who sits where, and for guests as they arrive, so they can find their seat without asking anyone. The boards can show the menus too, if you want the kitchen to see directly what was chosen at each table.
How many tables there are and how many seats each has — as the restaurant gave them to you.
You move them around; the remaining seats stay visible at every table, all the time.
The lists and table boards come out of the final plan, ready to print or to send over.
A plan that looks like the room on the night rather than last month's intentions — and the material the restaurant needs, taken from it instead of rebuilt in another tool the day before.
Start from a design and the list and the tables live in the same workspace.
What organisers who have done this on paper tend to ask.
Yes, and it is the better way: start with the families who confirmed and seat the rest as they answer.
You change the tables and move people; nothing is rewritten elsewhere, because the boards are generated from the plan.
Yes, the boards can display the chosen menus too, if that makes the handover to the restaurant easier.
No card until you publish
Pick the event, open a design with your names in it and have every tool in front of you. You pay only when you publish.
