Glossary · 46 terms

What everyone at your venue assumes you already know

Covers, finals, escort cards, a room turn. Venues and caterers use this vocabulary constantly and almost never explain it, which is how people end up agreeing to something in a planning meeting and working out what it meant afterwards. Here is all of it, in plain English.

Tables and layout

Round table
The standard reception table. A 5ft (60in) round seats 8 comfortably or 10 at a squeeze; a 6ft (72in) round seats 10 comfortably or 12 tightly.
Banquet table
A long rectangular table, typically 6ft or 8ft, seated on both long sides and sometimes the ends. Seats more people in the same floor area than rounds, but each guest can only talk to four or five others.
Trestle table
A long table on folding A-frame legs. The British term for what most American venues call a banquet table; functionally the same thing.
Top table
The table where the couple and, traditionally, both sets of parents sit, usually facing the room. Also called the head table.
Head table
The North American name for the top table. In practice it more often means the couple plus the wedding party, with parents seated elsewhere.
Sweetheart table
A table for the couple alone. It removes every question about who sits at the top table, which is why it has become the default at weddings with divorced or remarried parents.
Kids' table
A table seating only children. Works from roughly age six upward and only when there are at least four children of similar age; below that it isolates them rather than entertaining them.
U-shape layout
Tables arranged in three connected sides with an open end. Common at smaller weddings and at conferences, because everyone can see everyone else.
E-shape layout
A top table with two or three long tables running perpendicular from it. A traditional British wedding layout for 60 to 120 guests.
Cabaret layout
Round tables with nobody seated on the side facing the stage, so no guest has their back to the speeches. Costs about 30 percent more floor space.
Banquet round layout
The default: evenly spaced round tables filling the room, with a dance floor and a top table or sweetheart table at one end.
Table plan
The document that says which guest sits at which table. In British usage it means the displayed board; in American usage 'seating chart' covers both.
Seating chart
The full assignment of guests to tables, and often to specific seats. Also the sign or board displaying it at the entrance to the reception.
Floor plan
The scaled drawing of the room showing where tables, the dance floor, the bar and the exits are. The seating chart says who; the floor plan says where.

Cards, signs and stationery

Escort card
A card given to each guest as they arrive telling them which table they are at. It escorts them to the table, not to a specific seat.
Place card
A card on the table itself marking one specific seat for one specific guest. Used with escort cards, not instead of them.
Seating chart display
A single board or sign listing every guest and their table, replacing individual escort cards. Cheaper and faster to produce, but harder to amend on the morning of the wedding.
Alphabetical seating display
A seating chart display ordered by guest surname rather than by table number. Faster for guests to read and the format most venues prefer.
Table number
The number identifying each table to guests. Skipping unlucky numbers — 4 at Chinese weddings, 13 at Western ones, 39 at Afghan ones — is normal and costs nothing.
Table name
A name used instead of a number, usually themed: places the couple have travelled, songs, books. Charming, but it slows guests down unless the display shows the layout too.

Guests and RSVPs

RSVP
From the French répondez s'il vous plaît. A guest's reply saying whether they are attending. Expect 10 to 15 percent of invitees never to reply without being chased individually.
RSVP deadline
The date by which replies are due, usually three to four weeks before the wedding so final numbers can go to the caterer.
Final numbers
The headcount given to the venue or caterer, typically 7 to 14 days before the event. After this date you usually pay for the number given, whether or not those people come.
Plus-one
A guest invited to bring a companion of their choosing. The companion is a guest in their own right for seating purposes and should never be seated apart from the person who brought them.
Evening guest
Someone invited to the reception after the meal rather than to the whole day. A British convention; they need no seat but often need a name badge or a place on the drinks count.
Guest list segment
A named group of guests — bride's family, university friends, work — used to keep related people near each other when seating. Sometimes called a crew, side, or party.
Dietary requirement
A guest's restriction on what they can eat, whether medical, religious or chosen. Collected at RSVP and passed to the caterer; it does not affect where someone sits.
Allergen declaration
The specific, written statement of a guest's food allergy, kept separate from general dietary preferences because it carries clinical risk and cannot be reduced to a tick box.

How seating actually gets decided

Hard constraint
A seating rule that must hold or the plan is wrong — a couple seated together, a child beside a parent, two people kept apart. A plan that breaks one is not a compromise, it is a mistake.
Soft constraint
A seating preference that should hold if possible — shared interests, a guest asking to sit near a friend. Traded off against every other preference.
Keep-apart rule
An instruction that two guests must not be seated at the same table. The most consequential rule in any real wedding and the one most often held only in somebody's head.
Keep-together rule
An instruction that two guests must share a table, or sit in adjacent seats. Couples and parent-and-child pairs are the usual cases.
Pinning
Fixing one guest to one seat so that re-running the plan cannot move them. Used for the people whose position you have already promised.
Constraint conflict
Two rules that cannot both be satisfied — for example, two guests who must sit together but are pinned to different tables. A good tool names the pair; a bad one silently drops one rule.
Table capacity
How many people a table seats. Note that the comfortable number and the physical maximum differ by two on most round tables, and caterers quote the maximum.
Seat allocation
Assigning guests to individual seats rather than just to tables. Worth doing for the top table and any table with a known tension; optional elsewhere.
Mingling seating
Deliberately splitting existing friendship groups so guests meet new people. Popular in theory and resented in practice — most guests want one person they know within two seats.
Buffer seat
An empty seat, or a seat given to an agreeable guest, placed between two people who should not be adjacent. The cheapest fix for a tension you cannot resolve by moving tables.

Service and the room

Covers
The catering term for seated diners. A venue quoting '180 covers' means 180 seated meals, not 180 people in the building.
Service charge
A percentage added to the catering bill for staffing. Relevant to seating because it usually scales with covers, so an extra table costs more than the extra food.
Plated service
Each course brought to the seated guest. Needs the tightest seating accuracy, because a meal choice is tied to a named seat.
Family style
Large shared dishes placed on each table. Forgiving of last-minute seating changes, since nothing is tied to a specific chair.
Buffet service
Guests collect their own food. Needs 20 to 30 percent more floor space for queuing and makes table position matter — the far table always eats last.
Dance floor
The cleared area for dancing, typically 2 to 3 square feet per guest expected to dance. Tables immediately beside it are the least popular in the room and should go to the people most likely to be on it.
Head count vs seat count
The number of people attending against the number of chairs placed. They should differ: most rooms need two to four spare seats for late confirmations and reseated guests.
Room turn
Rearranging the room between the ceremony and the meal. If your venue is doing one, the seating chart must be finished before the day, not on it.

Longer answers to the questions behind these terms are in the guides, and the numbers are in the free tools.