Count the tables first
Everything else in the room is placed relative to the tables, so the count comes first. Across the 10 floor plans on this site there are 59 tables holding 474 seats in 5 distinct capacities — 2, 6, 8, 10, 12 — which works out at 8 seats per table overall, and 8.5 across the 36 round tables. That average is the useful number: real rooms mix capacities, because guest groups do not arrive in even eights.
Which is also the argument for adding a spare table to whatever the division gives you. A hundred guests is ten rounds of ten on paper; in practice it is nine full tables, one table of six college friends you refuse to split, and two people who RSVP in the last week. The extra table costs a linen and a centrepiece. Re-drawing the room two days out costs considerably more.
Place the dance floor, then the couple
The dance floor goes central, or centred on the longest wall — not in a corner. This is the mistake that shows up in more floor plans than any other, and the reason it matters is behavioural rather than aesthetic: people get up to dance from tables that are beside the floor, and stay seated when dancing means walking somewhere. Put the band or DJ along one edge of it and the bar where its queue does not cross the floor.
Then place yourselves, because that decision anchors the seating hierarchy that follows. A head table is long, one-sided and needs a wall plus a clear sightline. A sweetheart table is two chairs and can sit almost anywhere near the floor. Parents host the nearest tables either way, then family, then friend groups, then — deliberately last — the tables nearest the speakers.
Rounds, long tables, or both
Rounds fit more people into a given room and let a whole table see one another, which is why hotels own hundreds of them. Long banquet tables photograph beautifully down a candlelit centre and dissolve the sense that table 9 is a punishment — but each guest can only really talk to about five people, so groups have to be laid out along the table rather than dropped at it. Rectangle-heavy rooms also want more length and less width than couples expect, so check the plan against the actual dimensions before committing.
Mixing is usually the honest answer, and it is what the mixed-rounds plan above does: a few tens for the big family groups, eights for everything else, so natural groups stay whole. If you want to see the same rooms as finished, annotated charts, they are on the examples page, and the printable template gallery has the display versions.
A free floor plan maker that exports for the venue
The editor below is a working wedding floor plan maker: add tables at any capacity, drag them into position, paste your guest list, and drop names onto specific chairs. Export a print-ready PDF — the file the venue and caterer set the room from — or a PNG to enlarge for the entrance board. No account, no trial; free exports carry one small watermark line.
Once the room is drawn, the guest-by-guest part is a different job, and the order to do it in is in the step-by-step guide. To start from an empty room instead, use the blank templates, or build from scratch at the main wedding seating chart maker.