Wedding Ceremony Seating

It's your wedding, so you can seat guests however you like - one of the most fun weddings we attended had no seating plan whatsoever.  There are traditional seating conventions, however, and if you don't have strong feelings about doing things differently, here's the basic plan. 

In Christian weddings, the bride's family typically sits on the left side of the church or aisle, and the groom's family sits on the right.  In a Jewish wedding, the bride's family sits on the right, and the groom's sits on the left.  (In Orthodox Jewish ceremonies, typically men and women are seated separately.)

If you expect to have a lot more guests from one side, you may wish to seat everyone together so things feel balanced.  Simply ask your ushers to alternate sides - otherwise you may have 100 guests on one side and 20 on the other.

Parents normally sit in the first row.  If you plan for your wedding party to be seated during the service, they may use the front row, in which cases parents will sit in the second row.  Normally whether your wedding party sits or not depends on the length of the service; if your service will run more than twenty-five minutes, it's considerate to let your wedding party sit for a portion of the ceremony.  

Siblings sit in the row behind the parents, and grandparents sit in the row behind siblings.  In many cases your siblings will be in your wedding party - if that's the case, move the grandparents up.  Or, if the church will be crowded and space is at a premium, you can put parents and grandparents on the same row; just make sure to seat grandparents first.

If your parents are divorced, typically the  birth mothers sit in the first row.  If mothers (or fathers) are remarried, then the fathers sit in the second row.

Guests should be seated by groomsmen or ushers, filling the church from front to back.  (Although a number of guests will ask to sit farther back; in almost every wedding we attend there'll be a group at the front of the church and a group at the back, with the middle rows fairly empty.)  

Expect guests to arrive late; some always do.  A nice touch we've seen is for an usher (not a groomsman, obviously) to remain at the back of the church to handle late arrivals; instead of seating them, he asks them to take seats near the back, and to go to their seats by the side aisles rather than the main aisle.  That way their entry is less disruptive.

One other note:  Ask your ushers to seat parents with small children near aisles; that way if the children are loud or disruptive parents can easily take them out of the service.  The child's parents - and the rest of the guests - will appreciate that touch.