Floor Plan Schmlorplan

I realize that I didn’t exactly come out and discuss it, but if you read this post, you can deduce that we’re not having a seating plan. We will have reserved seating for family, and a head table for us to share with the bridal party, but the rest of our people guests (trying to work on that) will be able to choose wherever they want to sit.

The problem I initially encountered, when trying to seat 200 people, was will there be enough room?!? I drew up a few diagrams in excel (nerd alert!), using round as well as banquet tables to see what would work best when it was drawn to scale. I scaled the columns in Excel to 6 feet, and the numbered rows to 1.5 feet. I found this website to aid in determining table spacing, and how much space was needed for chairs. I found this site and this site to calculate how much square footage we would need for the dance floor.

WARNING: Math problem ahead! Visiting this site from above, will tell you what size dance floor you need without having to do the math, and you can skip the below paragraph.

However, if you want to calculate your dance floor square footage for fun, keep reading! What the math boiled down to is that if 200 people are there, then half of them will be dancing at any given time. Each couple will need approximately 9 square feet. So, if there are 200 guests, and 100 people (50 couples) are dancing, then we will need 450 square feet. 450 square feet of dance floor would be roughly equal to a 16 x 28 ft.

I tried round tables:

The dance floor is slightly larger then the recommended square footage, but some of the tables are jutting onto the dance floor. The outlined rectangle to the left is where the band would be setup.

This option gave us plenty of seating and dance floor space. However, there would be no room for a head table (which I preferred over the sweetheart table option), and I didn’t like the shape of the dance floor. It needed to be more square, and not quite so rectangular.

As well as banquet tables:

This option also provided plenty of space for sitting and dancing, as well as moving around. We honestly went with this floor plan first, due to the space allowance, but the preferred table was the round one and that eventually won us back over to previous floor plans.

The obvious choice would have been banquet tables, but, with everybody I talked to rallying behind the round tables, we finally made a choice to go with the round tables. It was going to be tight. My main concern was that the dance floor was going to be too small. We want to throw a rockin’ party, not an afternoon tea. If the dance floor wasn’t big enough, who would want to get up and dance? But I was simply out of real estate.

Well, good news!

No, Zedler Mill didn’t call to say they are renovating. However, Clint Taft (from our band!) emailed to let us know that he set’s the band up on the wraparound patio that’s outside the building, then they open the huge garage door to let the sound filter inside. We just got more real estate folks!

After playing around with Excel and modifying one of my earlier floor plans, I think I was able to come up with something that’s going to work perfectly!

I’m so happy that this worked out. I feel like all the kinks are starting to get worked out, and the questions that couldn’t be answered until we got closer to the wedding are starting to get answers.

What do you think of my final floor plan? Think it will work out?