THE TABLE & TOAST NOTEBOOK

Keep wedding seating groups together — and check who must sit apart

Create a same-table group when two or more guests should move together. Add a keep-apart pair when two IDs must not share a table. Table & Toast checks your entered rules against a manual seating plan; it does not decide relationships or search for an optimal arrangement.

Open Groups & rules → Import your guest list first

Build a group from stable IDs

1. Import or add each guest as a separate record. Two people named Alex River still need two IDs.
2. Open Groups & rules. Give the group a neutral label, then select at least two IDs. Each guest can belong to one group; edit that group to change its membership.
3. If needed, select two distinct IDs under Keep two guests apart. No explanation or relationship label is required.
4. Read the active conflicts and candidate-table reasons. Select Review move to see every attending member’s old and new table.
5. Cancel keeps the event unchanged. Confirm applies the whole eligible move together. Undo restores the whole previous arrangement during this browser session.

Who counts, and how the check works

Only attending guests count toward actual seats and active rules. Pending and declined members remain in the group and keep their saved table numbers, but are excluded from a group move. Their names, IDs and excluded states appear in the review. Changing an RSVP later requires another review.

For each candidate table, the unit is one seat per attending guest:

seats after move = attending guests already at target outside this group
                 + attending members of the group

Members already at the target are removed from the first term, so no guest is counted twice. A table is eligible if that total does not exceed its entered capacity and no active keep-apart pair involving a moving member would share it. An active keep-apart pair inside the group makes every table ineligible. No attending members means there is nobody to move.

This check covers the moving group and its destination. An unrelated pair already sharing a table stays flagged in the internal review. Eligible does not mean the entire seating plan satisfies every rule. Individual moves, new replies and changes to capacity may also create conflicts; inspect the review before the final export. Unassigning a group is allowed as an explicit planning step, but it leaves its attending members needing seats.

Worked counterexample: eight fictional guests, two tables

Use Try 8-person example in the workspace. It replaces the current event after confirmation, so save a JSON backup first. All eight guests in this example are attending.

Group Blue contains E6 and E7. A keep-apart pair links E6 and E8. Table 1 cannot take the group: 5 + 2 = 7, exceeding 6 seats. Table 2 has space but keeps E6 with E8, so it is also blocked. The tool explains both reasons instead of guessing a solution.

One manual resolution: move ungrouped E8 to Table 1, bringing that table to 6. Table 2 then has E6 and E7, and becomes eligible for Group Blue. This is a possible arrangement for this example, not an optimization claim. Add a keep-apart pair between E6 and E7 to see an impossible rule combination: the group says together while the pair says apart. Edit one of those rules; moving tables cannot solve it.

Keep internal rules out of guest printouts

Group labels and keep-apart pairs appear only in this organizer review and JSON backups. Guest CSV exports retain every guest regardless of filters but omit those rules. PDFs use your separate print population and show guest names, IDs, RSVP labels where appropriate and table numbers, without relationship constraints. Review Letter/A4 printing and cut lines.

Version 1 JSON backups are accepted and upgraded with empty rule lists; version 2 preserves rules. Restore validates every ID before showing a replacement preview. Removing a guest removes their keep-apart pairs and group membership; a group with fewer than two remaining members is removed. Removing a table unassigns its guests without deleting them or their groups.

Choose the scope you need

PerfectTablePlan includes automatic seating and broader event planning. WedSites connects seating to RSVP planning and offers social or family groups. Grouping is an established feature in this category. Our smaller, free workflow keeps explicit manual decisions in the same local guest-to-print event. It is not a venue geometry tool or a substitute for an organizer’s judgment.

Local storage and backup privacy · Device, font and event-size limits · Sources and alternatives

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