How to use AI to plan your wedding seating plan

August 24, 2023

Creating the wedding seating plan can be a dreaded task, often left until the last minute. Keeping everyone happy can be a meticulous task balancing the various preferences and personalities of your guests with the physical space of your venue. But what if there was an easier way to organise your seating plan?

Jess Martin, a wedding planning expert at Ginger Ray said: “Anyone who has planned a wedding has, at some point wished that they could wave a magic wand to create the perfect seating plan. Using this method, you can get AI to do a lot of the hard work for you.”

We’ve experimented with the Code Interpreter feature of ChatGPT to reveal which prompts you can use to get AI to create the perfect seating plan for your wedding.

1. Categorise your guest list
Start by putting your guest list into a table in Excel or Google Sheets. You’ll want to include columns for guest names, their relationship to you and your partner, category, vibe, ‘must sit next to’ and ‘can’t sit next to’.

In the ‘relationship to the couple’ column, you should add labels like Mother of the Bride, Groomsman, Bride’s colleague or Groom’s family friend. Just list how you know each guest or their role.

Then consider what category your guests fit into. Are they part of the wedding party, are they family members, uni friends or work friends? Assign a category for each guest.

You want everyone at your wedding to have a great time, so beyond their role on the day and your relationship, consider their personality and vibe. Whether they are a VIP member of the wedding party like the maid of honour or father of the bride, a party person who might be popping bottles all night or a great aunt who might require a tamer family-friendly environment, assign your guests a vibe.

Finally, make a note of who your guests absolutely can’t or must sit next to. You may want to sit kids next to their parents so make a note of who people must sit next to in the relevant column. Equally, you may have guests who shouldn’t be sitting near each other so note this down. Now download your guest list as a CSV file.