Community, Events & Creators · Web
TablePeace: a wedding seating chart optimizer that knows the feuds
Wedding seating that respects divorces, friend clusters, and the uncle problem.
TablePeace is a wedding seating chart optimizer for couples and planners who have to seat divorced parents, friend clusters, and one difficult uncle. You enter the rules once and get a starting plan plus every conflict it could not resolve.
Waitlist Not built yet Updated 5 September 2026
What problem does TablePeace solve?
The seating chart is the last thing left on the list and the only thing nobody can delegate. It is not a puzzle about tables. It is a map of a family. Your mother will not sit with your father's new wife. Two university friends stopped speaking last year and neither has said why. The groom's aunt uses a wheelchair and needs the end of a table near the door. Half of this lives in your head and none of it fits in a spreadsheet column. So you cut place cards out of paper and lay them on the dining table, and at one in the morning you move one card and three other rules break. Then the caterer changes a table of ten to two tables of eight, and the whole arrangement has to start again. A cousin cancels the week before and the table she was holding together falls apart.
Seating conflict checker
Paste your guests, keep-together and keep-apart pairs, and table sizes to get a starting plan and a conflict list.
Free to use. No account. Nothing you type here is stored.
What would TablePeace do?
TablePeace would hold the rules, not just the names. You list guests, mark the pairs that must sit together, mark the pairs that must not, and set how many seats each table has. TablePeace groups the must-sit pairs, fills tables largest group first, and hands back a plan with every unresolved clash written out in plain words. It does not pretend the answer is perfect. Where a rule had to break, it says which rule and at which table, so you can decide rather than discover it on the night. You lock the tables you are happy with and run the rest again. Access notes ride along with the guest, so the aunt who needs the door stays near the door. Share a read-only link and the plan travels to your planner or your venue.
How would it work?
- 1Paste your guest list, one name per line, and set the number of tables and seats.
- 2Mark the pairs who must sit together and the pairs who must stay apart.
- 3Read the starting plan and the list of clashes it could not avoid.
- 4Lock the tables that work, adjust seats or rules, and run it again.
Who is it for?
- Couples doing the chart themselves at the dining table three weeks before the day.
- Wedding planners rebuilding charts for several clients as guest counts move.
- Anyone seating a large family where two people have not spoken in years.
Can you sort out wedding seating chart conflicts with sticky notes and a conflict list?
Buy a pad of sticky notes and a large sheet of paper, or use the back of a roll of wrapping paper. Write one guest per note. Use one color for each side of the family and a third color for the people who belong to nobody, the work friends and the plus-ones. Draw circles on the big sheet for each table and write the seat count inside each circle. Before you place anyone, write the conflict list. Two columns on a separate page: keep together on the left, keep apart on the right. Keep together is usually easy, couples, families with small children, the four school friends who arrived as a unit. Keep apart is the one you have to say out loud. Write the divorced parents, the ex who was invited by mistake, the business partner and the person who left the business. Add a third short list for access: who needs the end of a table, who needs to be near the door, who cannot hear across a wide table. Now place the largest locked groups first. A group of six going into a table of eight leaves two seats you can fill with easy guests. Do the difficult uncle early, not last, because he constrains everything around him. Fill the leftover seats with the people who genuinely do not mind. When you are done, read the conflict list again and check every keep-apart pair against the circles. Photograph the sheet before anyone bumps the table, and photograph it again after each round of changes so you can go back. Leave one seat empty per table for the late change that always comes. Write the reason beside each keep-apart rule, because in three weeks you will not remember why that one mattered.
What do people use today?
| Option | Good at | The gap |
|---|---|---|
| Paper place cards on the dining table | Free, tactile, and instantly understood by everyone helping; moving a guest takes a second. | Nothing checks the rules for you, and one bump or one cancellation resets an evening of work. |
| A spreadsheet with a column per table | Fast to count seats, easy to share, and it survives on a phone at the venue. | A cell cannot hold "these two must not be within sight of each other", so the rules stay in your head. |
| Seating features inside wedding planning websites | Drag guests onto tables, print a chart, and keep the guest list and the replies in one place. | Layout is the point. The tool will happily seat two people who should never meet, because it was never told. |
| A downloadable seating chart template | A tidy printable grid that gives structure to a first pass and prints well for the venue. | Static. Change one table size and every seat after it has to be retyped by hand. |
What would it cost?
One wedding
$49 once
- Unlimited guests and tables
- Keep-together and keep-apart rules
- Conflict list and printable chart
Planner
$15/mo
- Everything in One wedding
- Several events open at once
- Read-only links for couples and venues
Prices are proposed. Founding members lock in the lowest price if we build TablePeace.
Questions people ask
What is a wedding seating chart optimizer?
A wedding seating chart optimizer takes a guest list, table sizes, and rules about who must sit together or apart, then proposes an arrangement and names the rules it could not satisfy. The free checker on this page does exactly that.
Does the free checker give me a perfect plan?
No. The checker places the largest groups first into the first table with room and no clash. That is a sensible starting point, not an optimal one. It lists every keep-apart pair it had to break so you can fix those by hand.
How do you seat divorced parents?
Divorced parents usually need separate tables of their own people, both near the front, neither behind the other. Write the rule down as a keep-apart pair rather than carrying it in your head, and tell whoever else is moving cards.
What about guests who use a wheelchair or need to lip-read?
Access notes belong on the guest, not on the table. Mark who needs an end seat, a clear route to the door, or a quieter corner, and treat that as a rule the plan cannot break rather than a preference it can trade away.
Can my planner work on the chart with me?
That is what the Planner tier is for. You would share a link, and the planner could see the chart and the conflict list without needing your account. Changes on the day stay in one place instead of in three text messages.
What happens when the venue changes the table sizes?
You change the seat count and run the plan again. Tables you have locked stay as they are. Groups that no longer fit come back as unseated names, so you place them deliberately instead of finding out at the venue.
Why is TablePeace a one-time price?
You have one wedding. A monthly fee for a job that lasts six weeks is irritating, so the couple's price is a single payment. Planners running several weddings at once pay monthly, because they keep using it after your day is over.
When will TablePeace launch?
There is no date. TablePeace gets built only if enough couples and planners join this waitlist and say they would pay the one-time price. Joining costs nothing, and the conflict checker on this page stays free.
Where does this stand?
TablePeace is a proposal, not a product. This page collects demand from search and answer engines. Askwright builds it only if enough people join the waitlist and say they would pay. Read how this works.