The queue math nobody does
Picture 120 guests arriving from cocktail hour in a ten-minute window. Each one stops at your chart and scans until they find their own name. On an alphabetical board, that scan is binary-search fast — everyone knows where "M" lives in the alphabet, finds "Marsh, Theo — Table 6," and moves. Five seconds. On a by-table board, guests must read table groups one by one until they stumble on themselves — fine at eight tables, painful at fifteen. That difference, multiplied by 120 people, is the difference between a graceful flow into dinner and a bottleneck photographed from behind.
So the working rule planners use: under ~75 guests, sort by table; over ~75, sort alphabetically. Small weddings get the charm of table groupings ("look, we're with the cousins!"); big weddings get throughput.
What each format says
By-table displays read like a story of the party — each table a little cast list. They're the right choice when the groupings themselves are part of the delight, when tables have names instead of numbers ("The Paris Table"), and when your count is modest. Their weakness beyond speed: guests immediately see who else shares their table, which occasionally re-opens negotiations you had closed. Alphabetical displays are anonymous about groupings — each guest learns their own table and discovers tablemates on arrival, which quietly defuses the "why am I at table 9" read. Their cost is romance: A–Z columns look administrative unless the stationery design carries the beauty.
Formatting details that matter either way: list guests as they'll expect to find themselves (married couples with different names get separate lines), spell every name correctly from your RSVP list rather than memory, and make the type legible from four feet — 24pt minimum on a poster board. If a name is on the board, a chair must exist for it; update the board when the chart changes in the final week.
Either way, the chart comes first
Both display formats are generated from the same master document: the actual seating chart with tables, seats, and names. Build that in the free maker — it tracks per-table counts and exports a print-ready PDF — and the display board becomes a formatting decision instead of a second project. The by-table version is effectively the chart itself; for an alphabetical board, read guest names A–Z from your list with each one's table label beside it. Start from a template if the room isn't built yet, or see layout examples for what the master chart should look like.