Question 1

How do I make a seating chart for a wedding?

Accepted Answer

Start with your confirmed guest list — Anvaya imports it from a CSV or pulls it from your guest dashboard if you are using Anvaya for RSVPs already. Pick the ceremony you are seating. Drop the tables you rented onto the canvas — round, rectangle, king, oval, or square — and label them by host family or table number. Drag guests from the unseated panel onto seats. Save and export. A first pass for a 250-guest reception takes a couple of focused evenings; the per-event canvases keep you from re-doing the work for each function.

Question 2

Do we need a seating chart?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Without assigned seating, the caterer can't serve specific meals to specific guests, and dinner opens with a thirty-minute mill while guests negotiate seats. For the mehndi and sangeet, an assigned chart is less strict — many couples assign only the family front rows and let everyone else mingle. Anvaya supports both modes: a fully assigned reception canvas plus a partially assigned mehndi where only the anchor mats are locked.

Question 3

How many guests fit at a round vs rectangular table?

Accepted Answer

By the catering-industry rule of thumb, a 60-inch round seats 8 comfortably and 10 tightly; a 72-inch seats 10–12. A six-foot rectangular banquet table seats six to eight; an eight-foot rectangle seats eight to ten. King tables — the long banquet runs used down the centre of the reception — typically run eight by four feet and seat twelve, or sixteen feet end-to-end for the head table at twenty-four. Anvaya ships with default capacities per shape and lets you override per-table.

Question 4

When should I create my seating chart?

Accepted Answer

Hold off until RSVPs are roughly settled — for most weddings, two to three weeks before the ceremony. Earlier than that and you will redo the chart three or four times. Later and you are arranging tables on the back of an envelope the night before. Anvaya lets you sketch tables and place anchor seats (head table, parents, immediate family) any time, then drop the rest once RSVPs land. Late changes — a flight cancellation, a last-minute plus-one — flow into the chart without forcing a redo.

Question 5

Can I have different seating for mehndi and reception?

Accepted Answer

Yes — this is the whole point. Anvaya treats each ceremony as its own canvas with its own layout, capacity, and guest set. The mehndi is floor mats in a courtyard. The sangeet has a stage and a performance row. The reception is round tables of ten with a head table at the centre. The same guest can land on a mehndi mat, the sangeet front row, and a round table near the parents — three placements, one workspace.

Question 6

How do I seat the bride's side vs the groom's side at an Indian wedding?

Accepted Answer

Traditionally the families sit on opposite sides as they face the mandap — bride's family on the left, groom's on the right. For the reception many couples blend the two sides at family tables (parents together at the head, siblings mixed at the surrounding tables) and keep the wider relatives split. Anvaya tags every guest with side of family and shows a subtle colour wash on the canvas so you see at a glance whether the blending matches what you intended. There is no single rule — your tradition wins; the chart tells the truth about what you arranged.

Question 7

Where should I seat single guests?

Accepted Answer

Group single guests by age cohort and shared interest where possible — the cousins-and-college-friends table is a classic move and works because the guests already know each other. Avoid the "singles table" trope that throws unmatched adults at a round of strangers; it reads as match-making and rarely lands. Anvaya tags each guest with group affiliation (college friends, work, cousins, neighbourhood) so you can drop a coherent group on a table without having to remember who knows whom.

Question 8

Where do kids sit?

Accepted Answer

Two common patterns. For younger kids (under about eight), seat them with their parents and put a kids' activity table nearby with crayons, an iPad, or a planner-provided sitter — the parents get to eat, the kids get to fidget. For older kids (eight to fourteen), a dedicated kids' table near the family group works well; they get autonomy without being unsupervised. Anvaya marks each guest with an age band so the family-group placement runs smoothly. Keep the kids' table away from the speakers and the bar; the canvas warns you if you drop a kids' table near a flagged zone.

Question 9

Can I import my guest list from a spreadsheet?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Anvaya accepts CSV or Excel imports and maps the columns automatically — name, phone, email, side of family, family group, dietary, plus-ones. Confidence scores show on each column so you can fix a wrong mapping before you import. If you are already using Anvaya for RSVPs, the canvas pulls directly from your confirmed-guest list. Re-import an updated sheet anytime; Anvaya deduplicates on phone and email and merges new fields onto existing records without creating duplicates.

Question 10

How does seating sync with RSVPs?

Accepted Answer

The unseated panel is filtered live to the guests who said yes to that ceremony. A guest who changes their RSVP from yes to no clears their seat at that event automatically — the seat goes open, the unseated count updates, the next caterer export reflects it. A guest who confirms a late plus-one shows up in the unseated list ready to drop on. The canvas reads the same data model as the RSVP dashboard — no separate sync step, no "refresh the chart" button to remember.

Wedding seating chart maker for multi-event South Asian weddings

A South Asian seating chart is not one room of round tables.

Different rooms for different ceremonies

Dietary tracking lives on the seat

Family politics — who sits where matters

Seat every ceremony from the same guest list.

Round, rectangle, king, oval, and square — drag-drop.

Mehndi floor mats, sangeet stage row, reception tables.

Dietary tags and RSVP state on every seat.

CSV in, print-ready PDF out — for the caterer.

Bride side, groom side, head table, stage placement.

Questions we hear a lot

RSVP & Guests

Multi-Event

Vendors

Mehndi mats.
Reception rounds.
One workspace.