A head table is a big-room decision
Counted across the 10 floor plans in this library, head tables only turn up in the larger rooms: the 3 head-table layouts average 71 seats across 8.3 tables, while the 4 sweetheart layouts average 40 seats across 5.3 tables. The head tables themselves hold 6, 8, 8 chairs.
That is not a rule, but it does describe a real constraint. A head table is a long, one-sided object that has to face the room and cannot be tucked into a corner, so it needs a wall to sit against and a clear sightline from most of the floor. Small rooms rarely have both. If your reception is under about forty people in a single space, a head table tends to eat the geometry, and either a sweetheart table or a U-shape — where everyone faces the middle — gets you the same togetherness without the wall.
Who sits there, and who does not
The wedding party, and only the wedding party. Working out from the centre: the couple, then the maid of honour beside one of you and the best man beside the other, then the rest of the attendants alternating outward so the table stays balanced and the ends do not become two separate parties. Everyone is on one side, facing the room. The practical reason for the alternating order is the microphone: the two people most likely to be handed one are the two nearest the middle.
Traditionally excluded: parents, the officiant, and — the contentious one — attendants' partners. Each set of parents is better off hosting a nearby table with grandparents and close family, where they can actually talk to people. The officiant sits with their own partner. And the partners of your wedding party either join the head table too, which is entirely acceptable and increasingly normal, or they spend dinner with strangers.
The plus-one problem, stated honestly
This is the decision underneath the decision. Eight attendants with eight partners means either a sixteen-seat head table running the length of the room, or eight people eating dinner apart from the person they came with. Neither is a disaster; both are a cost you should pick on purpose rather than discover at the reception.
The three routes couples actually take: widen the head table to include partners and accept the length; take a sweetheart table and send the entire party out to guest tables with their dates; or do both — a sweetheart table for the two of you plus one long table for the party and their partners together. The third costs one extra table's worth of floor, which is the cheapest line in this whole argument. The case for each is on the sweetheart table page.
Length, sightlines and the room around it
Because a head table is single-sided, it runs roughly twice as long as the same number of people would take at a normal table. Count the seats, ask your venue how many settings fit along one side of the banquet tables it stocks, and add tables until the number works — then look at the result against the width of the room. A head table wider than the dance floor starts to divide the space rather than anchor it.
Once the head table is placed, the rest of the room falls out of it: parents' tables closest, then family, then friend groups, then the tables nobody wants near the speakers. How many tables you need in total, and the arithmetic behind it, is on the reception floor plan page; the order to make the decisions in is in the step-by-step guide.
Chart it and print it
The editor below opens on the classic head-table layout — eight at the head table, eight rounds of eight for guests. Rename the tables, paste your guest list, drag names onto chairs, and export a print-ready PDF for the venue or a PNG to enlarge for the entrance board. Free exports carry a small watermark; the tool and the layouts are free. You can also start from the main wedding seating chart maker, from a template, or from the annotated examples.