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Table plan template

A table plan template is a ready-laid-out set of tables you fill with your own guest list instead of drawing the room first. This one opens with the traditional wedding breakfast shape — a top table of 10 across the front and 7 rounds below it, 66 seats in all. Paste your list, drag the names, print the board.

Charlotte & OliverHedingham Barn · 12 September 2026Top Table10/10 seatedCACharlotte A.OAOliver A.MAMargaret A.PAPeter A.EWEleanor W.GWGeorge W.FBFreya B.CBCallum B.NONiamh O.DODeclan O.Table 18/8 seatedIPImogen P.RPRhys P.BSBeatrice S.ASAlistair S.SLSian L.GLGareth L.HCHarriet C.ECEdward C.Table 28/8 seatedAGAoife G.FGFionn G.RTRosalind T.HTHugh T.MCMillie C.JCJoseph C.AMAnwen M.DMDafydd M.Table 36/8 seatedVBVerity B.NBNathaniel B.SDSaoirse D.CDCormac D.PFPoppy F.TFThomas F.++Table 40/8 seated++++++++Table 50/8 seated++++++++Table 60/8 seated++++++++Table 70/8 seated++++++++

Drag tables · click a guest, then a seat · drag canvas to pan

Event details (title on your chart)
Guests (32/32 seated · 66 seats)

Paste a whole list here — one name per line, or separated by commas.

  • Charlotte AshworthTop Table
  • Oliver AshworthTop Table
  • Margaret AshworthTop Table
  • Peter AshworthTop Table
  • Eleanor WhitfieldTop Table
  • George WhitfieldTop Table
  • Freya BannermanTop Table
  • Callum BannermanTop Table
  • Niamh O'RourkeTop Table
  • Declan O'RourkeTop Table
  • Imogen PryceTable 1
  • Rhys PryceTable 1
  • Beatrice SowerbyTable 1
  • Alistair SowerbyTable 1
  • Sian LlewellynTable 1
  • Gareth LlewellynTable 1
  • Harriet CavendishTable 1
  • Edward CavendishTable 1
  • Aoife GallagherTable 2
  • Fionn GallagherTable 2
  • Rosalind ThorneTable 2
  • Hugh ThorneTable 2
  • Millie CartwrightTable 2
  • Joseph CartwrightTable 2
  • Anwen MorganTable 2
  • Dafydd MorganTable 2
  • Verity BlackwoodTable 3
  • Nathaniel BlackwoodTable 3
  • Saoirse DohertyTable 3
  • Cormac DohertyTable 3
  • Poppy FairweatherTable 3
  • Thomas FairweatherTable 3

Free, no signup · exports PNG and print-ready PDF · start from one of 17 templates or open a blank chart

What a table plan has to do

On the day, the table plan has about five minutes of work to do and it does it for everyone at once. The doors open, a hundred people walk past a board on an easel, and each of them needs to find one name and one table number without stopping the queue. That is the whole design brief. It is why the board is grouped by table rather than alphabetically, why the table names want to be larger than the guest names, and why a plan that reads beautifully on a laptop can fail completely at A3.

The second job is quieter and lasts longer: the plan is the document the venue, the caterer and the photographer all work from. The caterer counts covers off it, the venue sets the room from it, and if it does not match the place cards somebody spends the drinks reception rewriting cards. Keeping one file that produces both is worth more than any amount of care taken over the fonts.

The top table, and how much of the plan it takes

The layout above is deliberately the conventional one, because it is the shape most people are asked to reproduce. The top table holds 10 of the 66 seats — about 15% of the room — and the remaining 56 sit on 7 rounds. That proportion is the reason top tables cause so much trouble relative to their size: a small number of highly contested seats, all of them visible from everywhere else in the room, decided in front of an audience of parents.

The traditional order alternates the two families and puts the couple in the middle. It also assumes two sets of married parents, which is why so many couples quietly abandon it. The workable alternatives are a sweetheart table for two, which removes the question entirely, or seating both sets of parents as hosts at their own tables so that each has a table rather than a seat. Neither is a compromise so much as a different arrangement; both are one click away in the template gallery.

Building your plan

  1. Set the table count to your room. Add rounds until the seat total matches your numbers — the venue will have told you the maximum, and it is usually one table fewer than you think once the dance floor is in.
  2. Paste the whole guest list at once. A column copied out of a spreadsheet works, one guest per line, so there is no typing names twice.
  3. Seat the top table first and the difficult tables second. Everything easy fits around what is left, and doing it the other way round means redoing it.
  4. Rename the tables if you are not using numbers. Places, songs and years all work — just keep them short enough to read from two metres away.
  5. Export the PDF at the size your printer wants, and keep the PNG on a phone for the coordinator. Re-export after every change rather than annotating a printout.

Printing the board

Most venues expect something between A3 and A1 on an easel by the door. A3 is readable for a room of a hundred if the table names are large; anything more and you want A2. The PDF export is laid out for print rather than screen, so it scales up without softening, and the title, venue and date you typed into the editor print in the title block — which matters more than it sounds, because a board with no date on it is indistinguishable from the draft you printed a fortnight earlier. Free exports carry a small watermark in the corner; the layouts, the number of tables and both file formats are not limited.

Related plans

The seating plan template page is the same job under the other British name and starts from a function-room booking rather than a wedding breakfast. The seating plan generator builds a plan from a guest list when you have no layout yet, the wedding seating chart page is the American vocabulary for this document, and types of seating arrangement compares rounds against the other room layouts if the shape is still open.

Come back to this later?

The table plan gets printed the week of the wedding, and this page will still be here. Leave your email and we will send new templates, layout ideas, and first word when Pro lands:

Table plan FAQ

▸What is a table plan?

A table plan is the document that says which table each guest is sitting at — and, at a formal wedding breakfast, which seat. It is usually printed large and displayed at the entrance to the room so guests can find their table on the way in. The plan loaded above is the traditional shape: a top table of 10 across the front and 7 rounds of 8 below it, 66 seats in all.

▸What is the difference between a table plan and a seating plan?

Nothing, in ordinary use — "table plan" and "seating plan" are both British terms for the same document, and Americans and Canadians call it a seating chart. Wedding stationers sometimes draw a narrower line: the table plan is the board at the entrance that groups guests by table, while the seating plan is the working document the couple argue over for three weeks and the caterer needs a copy of. If a supplier asks you for one and you are not sure which they mean, send the full plan — it contains the board.

▸Is a table plan the same as place cards?

No, and most weddings use both. The table plan gets guests to the right table; place cards get them to the right seat once they are there. You can run a wedding on a table plan alone, letting each table sort itself out, and plenty do — it is one fewer thing to print and it removes the last round of arguments about who sits next to whom. Formal dinners and anything with a speaking order use both.

▸Who sits at the top table?

The traditional order, left to right facing the room, is chief bridesmaid, groom's father, bride's mother, groom, bride, bride's father, groom's mother, best man. That is eight; the template here opens at 10 so there is room for the two extra places most couples end up needing. It is a convention rather than a rule, and it assumes a family shape that many weddings do not have — step-parents, one parent, or four of them. Drag the names; nothing here enforces the old order.

▸Do I have to have a top table?

No. The two common alternatives are a sweetheart table for the couple alone, which takes the pressure off the parent seating entirely, and no top table at all, with the couple sitting at a round like everyone else. Both are in the template gallery. The top table survives mainly because it gives the speeches a natural stage — if your speeches are happening somewhere else, the argument for it is weaker than it looks.

▸How big should the printed table plan be?

A3 is the smallest that works for a room of a hundred; A2 or A1 on an easel is what most venues expect, because forty people read it at once in the five minutes before the doors open. Export the PDF rather than the PNG for anything going to a print shop — it scales without going soft. Set the title, venue and date in the editor first so the board says whose day it is.

▸Should the plan list guests alphabetically or by table?

By table, on the board. A guest arriving already knows their own name and is looking for a table number, so a board grouped by table answers the question in one pass. Alphabetical lists are for the coordinator and the caterer, who need to find one specific person. If you are printing both, print them as two separate sheets — a board trying to do both jobs does neither well.

▸Can I edit these templates without downloading anything?

Yes — that is the point of them. The 17 templates load straight into the editor above, so there is no .docx to open, no fonts to fix and nothing to reflow when a table of eight becomes a table of nine. Paste your guest list in one go, drag names between tables, and export when it is settled.

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