Increasingly these days, it seems like holiday dinners are not just family affairs, but gatherings of friends, co-workers, and family all mushed together; with relatives widely spread out, geographically and otherwise, and air travel becoming less and less appealing, hosts are opening up their homes to extended "families" of all kinds. And with guests who may or may not have known each other for years, assigned seating can relieve some of the social pressure of deciding where to sit, especially for single guests or guests new to the party.
Even at gatherings exclusive to family, I kind of like the idea of shaking things up as host by exerting a bit more control over the dynamic. If Uncle Fred always harasses cousin Betsy about her college search, why not seat him next to elderly Aunt Jane instead? To avoid ruffling any feathers too drastically, consider assigning seats for dinner and then encouraging guests to mingle over dessert by doing dessert as a cocktail-style buffet with plates on laps in the living room.
Place cards also create an opportunity to add pretty, simple touches to your holiday tables. Here are some of our favorite ideas (pictured above, from left to right):
• If your dining chairs allow it, a sweet little tag attached to the chair looks lovely and doesn't clutter the place setting. Enlist helpers among your younger guests to get these tied on early in the party.
• A single natural element, like a burr from a sweet gum tree or a small fruit (seckel pear or crabapple) makes a perfect botanical touch. Just tie on a little piece of ribbon and a name tag.
• The matte surface on the back of a magnolia leaf makes a beautiful "card" in itself. Use a thin gold pen as an elegant way to write the guests' names.
• An idea borrowed from a wedding: Use your computer to create little vellum slipcovers for simple, inexpensive votive candle holders. Print each guest's name on the vellum, light the candles, add a length of ribbon if you're feeling fancy, and create an instantly intimate mood.
• I love these pop-up paper place mats from Publique Living. The cut-out shapes make perfect built-in place cards. They're made of kraft paper, which might seem too casual for a holiday dinner, but when you dress them up with china, elegant napkins, and flowers, they totally lose any picnic-y vibe.
Place cards can be controversial, but at the holidays, when there are so many social stresses to overcome, I think they can actually be a great way to help everyone relax. What do you think? To assign your holiday dinner seats, or not to assign?
(Images: Susie Nadler; Martha Stewart; Sweet Tea and Porch Swings; Long Island Weddings; Publique Living)
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I think as a host you know whether to break up the assigned seats for dessert in a different room or not. It depends on the guest; if you know they are a social bunch and in-depth conversations are likely to ensue, breaking them up will be bad for the flow of the party and encourage people to leave. If you know it's likely to be a bit more awkward, with people who don't know each other who may be stuck for dinner with someone they can't get a conversation going with, then breaking it up will be great. I think getting this right is one of those things that reveals a truly skillful host.
depends on the guests, sorry
love the autumn leaf...
My family always entertained a lot, having folks over for Sunday dinners and the like, and as the oldest, and Mother's kitchen elf, the only question I ever got asked was "where am I sitting?" Place cards are a wonderful thing, especially when seating a crowd, but I think they're lovely anyway, and add a very personal touch to the table. A way of showing that you planned this meal with your guest(s) in mind. Yay, place cards!
Yes to the assigned seating with placecards. Here's MY reasons:
1. Takes out the discomfort and confusion of "where should I sit?"
2. If already mingling over cocktails and having your "ear talked off" by another guest, you don't necessarily want to be subjected to sitting next to that same guest all the way through your meal!
3. Host/hostess must be nearest the kitchen for obvious reasons.
4. Guests with children (either big or small) may need to sit at the ends of the table to ease their getting up and down to the restroom, diaper changes, or whatever the child may need.
5. Larger people (either in height or overall mass) also do best at the ends of the table to aid in their comfort. And men typically HATE straddling table legs (in my experience!)
6. Families share meals together ALL the time. At my house they can sit next a non family member for a change.
So are some of my personal reasons, some of them I think are quite obvious. And I personally like to be told where to sit at a dinner party as well!
At large inter-family meals (Thanksgiving with family friends, etc...), we always do placecards. The families in question have a couple of daughters that will both dominate the conversation, regardless of whether anyone else knows the people they're discussing, if both placed at the same table (we don't have a large enough table for everyone), and my brother-in-law dislikes sitting next to one of them because she literally yells when she talks (not figuratively, mind you, but literally). So we break up the two sisters, place my brother-in-law at least one seat away from the yeller, etc... and manage to make the meal more pleasant for everyone involved. If my mom is at one table, I sit at the other to act as that table's hostess, to fetch and carry, etc...
At family gatherings for just our extended family (as opposed to the "family we choose"), we generally choose a similar tactic, as a few of our relatives, if grouped together, will launch into inappropriate political tirades or make socially inept "jokes". It helps to spread the crazies around to preserve everyone else's sanity!
Personal interactions amongst guests - particularly extended family who might love each other but don't necessarily like each other - are things to consider when laying out seating arrangements, but I have to say that Burnttoast's recommendations are absolutely wonderful.
Neat idea.... but only if the added prep item doesn't add additional stress to party planning!
I am one of those people though, who doesn't like assigned seating. I hate it at traditional western weddings that are modeled after archaic imperial court rituals. I find the practice of formally and silently indicating a guest's status via proximity to the new couple archaic. I do understand that the practice is so common that very few people give it a thought at all. But holding court just seems ridiculous and burgesois in my eye.
Interestingly enough, the use of place cards at a dinner party is in fact a derivative of court ritual. From Emily Post, 1922, "On the morning of the dinner her secretary brings [the hostess] the place cards, (the name of each person expected, written on a separate card) and she puts them in the order in which they are to be placed on the table, very much as though playing solitaire. Starting with her own card at one end and her husband’s at the other, she first places the lady of honor on his right, the second in importance on his left. Then on either side of herself, she puts the two most important gentlemen. The others she fits in between, trying to seat side by side those congenial to each other."
I don't believe the editor is suggesting that we take up imperial practices at our family gatherings, and I think the suggested use may certainly be helpful. I just think it's interesting to know the source of our customs.
PS I agree with BurntToast's reasoning and want to add another one: Lefties. If you're a south-paw, it's nice to be on the end and not bump elbows.
I would hope family members who can't get along would simply sit themselves away from each other without a host/hostess needing to separate them. Beyond that assigned seats ended in elementary school.
Other appalling Western customs that originated in royal courts: the use of the capitalized "I" to indicate a first person pronoun, and silverware. So archaic!
I can't think of anything worse, but we only really do that at weddings or massive functions here.
I've always used place cards for large gatherings. I don't want people to stress out about where to sit. For this year's Thanksgiving, however, I've decided to skip the place cards! I finally realized the I'm the one stressing out about the seating arrangements. Instead, I'm just going to concentrate on my cooking and let my guests fight about who sits with who. I'm smiling just thinking about it. :)
Sometimes you just have to tell people where to sit to avoid an awkward family situation. Unfortunately everyone's family isn't perfect. :)
Sweet T Studio - This I realize, that no family is perfect. I can just go to either Grandma (mine or his) and find family that can't get along - but they are all old enough to know sitting down right next to the other is a very bad idea. And if two family members couldn't keep the peace at the holidays, neither would have been invited the next year.
I never liked assigned seats even in school. Put a placecard at my seat and I will happily trash it and the ones on either side of me. Then I can choose who sits next to me. :)
@burnttoast: Perhaps the reason that you know that men hate straddling table legs is that they complain more about it. That position is always less comfortable, whatever the gender of the person sitting there.
Society pressures women to behave more compliantly than it requires men to; for this reason, it is likely that women complain less about this.
How about equal opportunity table-leg straddling?
@rapunzel-
Oh yes, the men complain plenty!
My solution: I place smaller children at the corners because they typically sit on their knees to reach the table. No straddling required.
I used to put my daughter and her creepy boyfriend across the table from each other. His PDA was inappropriate and he couldn't reach across my husband to get to her.
Thank goodness she finally dumped the guy.
I think that place cards are a great idea for any size-able gatherings. When I lived in France, people were seated across from the person they came with and next to other people. I think that mixing it up this way really allows for livelier conversation and a more enjoyable experience overall, rather than people siting next to the people they see every day and having nothing new to say.
Gaidig - I'm sorry that your relationship with someone is so boring and dull that you can't talk to the person any more. I've known the guy I'm with for thirteen YEARS and I still have plenty of things to talk about with him.
I scorned assigned seating as too stuffy and formal until I hosted a Thanksgiving (family and close friends, all.) There was a much-too-long period of awkwardness as dinner started because no one knew where to sit. And a light went on in my head. "Oh! PLACECARDS." Now, I embrace assigned seating for even semi-large gatherings. There is nothing stuffy and formal about saving your guests from awkwardness.
PS I'm not a crazy person about assigned seating. If people want to swap seats that's fine. I just want to make things easy on my guests.