Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that its a bit rude to change the place cards at a reception?

153 replies

CrysPally · 26/03/2013 12:44

Sorry it this is retreading old ground, but this was brought up in the thread about separating couples at a wedding dinner, and I was surprised at the casualness with which some people suggested just swapping the place cards around. Surely there's far more to this then a guest could ever know about? The places might have been carefully chosen so that a shy/awkward person isn't on their tod, or that that Uncle Wandering Hands is kept safe, or any number of other things.

Leaving aside the couples together / apart etiquette, isn't it a bit rude to assume that you know better than the B&G?

OP posts:
TheCraicDealer · 26/03/2013 13:50

Yes, but you can't make everyone happy, no matter how hard you try there will be people that feel left out or like a spare dick.

So you might as well have a table plan which encourages people to talk a bit to new people during the meal and speeches, rather than hang about it little cliques discussing Great Aunt Rhoda's ingrowing toenail. After dinner guests divert themselves with dancing, going to the bar and sitting at random tables because their children have set up camp underneath them anyway, so it's not like you have to spend a great deal of time with these new people.

Pobblewhohasnotoes · 26/03/2013 13:51

Who cares? Do you not think that on the day you have better things to think about?

I sat my guests next to their partners and friends as I want them to be comfortable and have a good time, not to be forced into small talk with someone they're never going to see again.

I like sitting next to my DH at a wedding, we have loads to talk about! Maybe it says more about people who don't want to sat next to their partners... Grin

BuiltForComfort · 26/03/2013 13:56

So do all you people who insist on sitting next to your DH at a wedding talk to them exclusively then?

Binkybix · 26/03/2013 13:56

I wouldn't mind (or probably notice) if people rearranged themselves by mutual consent on a table and all were happier.

But, not everyone is in a couple, so if just one person wants to move things round to suit themselves to the detriment of other people at the table, that would piss me off.

HeathRobinson · 26/03/2013 13:59

From the op - 'The places might have been carefully chosen so that a shy/awkward person isn't on their tod'

or possibly a shy/awkward person might prefer to sit with their spouse. Thus being more comfortable and more likely to chat with the others.

Flobbadobs · 26/03/2013 14:00

Not just each other no, not at all! But if I am going to be sat on the Table Of Boredom (which is sadly inevitable) I would like someone I love to share my suffering.. Grin

Pobblewhohasnotoes · 26/03/2013 14:01

BuiltForComfort Tue 26-Mar-13 13:56:35
So do all you people who insist on sitting next to your DH at a wedding talk to them exclusively then?

No, not at all. I'm not a big fan of small talk so feel a lot more comfortable sitting next to my DH, it's easier. I can talk to him and other people. Plus we have DS so rarely have time just the two of us.

limitedperiodonly · 26/03/2013 14:03

We've been to the same weddings flobbadobs. Let's meet up next time Grin

Flobbadobs · 26/03/2013 14:04

limited sounds good, I'll be the one with the glazed expressn listening to a very beige person talking about their pile treatment... Grin

TheChaoGoesMu · 26/03/2013 14:04

I wouldn't mind if I wasn't sat next to dh, but if people want to sit next to each other then I can't see the problem of switching placecards personally. Whatever makes the guests happy.

MrsHoarder · 26/03/2013 14:05

So do all you people who insist on sitting next to your DH at a wedding talk to them exclusively then?

Not at all, but we are each other's support and it means that should the conversation with the other person die down I can have a word with the person I like best.

Hulababy · 26/03/2013 14:08

TBH I just think it is a bit of a non issue altogether.
The amount of time and more so control some people like to put into how their guests must act/be just because it is a wedding regularly astound me.
How grown adults manage to go out and eat in groups without such control must be a mircale, based on some bride and grooms ideas.

limitedperiodonly · 26/03/2013 14:10

I was at a big posh birthday party and one of the men on our table was appalled that he'd been seated with DH and me as we clearly weren't important enough.

I'd have cheerfully helped him swap placecards.

BreconBeBuggered · 26/03/2013 14:12

I wouldn't alter place-settings, no. I'd almost inevitably get caught in the act by the stranger I'd decided I didn't fancy sitting next to. And of course I'd spend the day sulking if I found out some random didn't want to sit next to me.

2aminthemorning · 26/03/2013 14:14

I have a disaster story about this.

At our wedding, my MIL's mother did not want to sit with her own brother and sister at the 'groom's extended family' table. She wanted to sit with people she didn't know as she 'liked to meet people'. Her brother and sister love her so we were a bit taken aback at how it would seem to them if their sister deserted them on such a special day for her. She talks using a very fake posh voice and her siblings are pure country farming folk; I suspect that had more to do with it than liking to meet people (she's definitely not a people person). A few weeks before the wedding, MIL-to-be talked to my mother about this (she was doing seating arrangement as per usual) and after looking at the seating plan, my mum just didn't feel it would work and didn't want to wish the old matriarch on any of her friends. So she said 'no' (there were many other requests she said 'yes' to!). MIL accepted without a problem.

On the day of the wedding, while the photographs were being taken and the guests were enjoying a cup of coffee, MIL scurried upstairs and started a major revamp of the seating plan. It wasn't just switching place cards, it was moving chairs about, creating space for a new seat here and taking a seat away there...just unbelievable and very complicated. Made a mockery of the seating plan, delayed things by about twenty minutes and brought the wrath of the event organiser down on my unsuspecting head. During the meal, my mother was in a towering rage and could barely bring herself to smile.

About five days into the honeymoon, I tentatively brought up what had happened. (She'd been an absolute nightmare about many other things too and FIL backs her up with aggression when necessary.) DH says now that at the time of that conversation, he instantly regretted marrying someone who obviously couldn't see his mother's intentions for what they were and didn't want to bring his parents' happiness. From that point on, he looked forward to getting the honeymoon over and getting back to 'normality', working in the family business.

All for the sake of a place card.

olgaga · 26/03/2013 14:14

Too right Hula I think people forget that a wedding is first and foremost a celebration of a couple's commitment to each other. As someone else said, it's not a State Occasion!

lainiekazan · 26/03/2013 14:16

There was a thread about this a few years ago and someone went wild at me and suggested that dh and I didn't have a good marriage because we didn't insist on sitting next to each other at social events.

If you're at the same table but not together, is it so terrible? And think how mortifying it would be for the person who finds that their place name has been moved. If people agree to swap and are happy about it, fine, but to sneak up to a table and rearrange the cards to suit yourself is quite ill-mannered.

Binkybix · 26/03/2013 14:22

At my wedding the weird hotel owner told us just before we went into the meal that he had swapped mine and my DH's place cards around so it would be easier for me to get in with my dress. I asked if he had sorted the rest of the table out too - ie would I still be sitting next to my dad..and he hadn't.

We made him go and switch them back and he was really annoyed about it. Furthermore, my original seat was easier to get into with my dress. The man was truly weird.

SirChenjin · 26/03/2013 14:25

Yes it's rude and I certainly wouldn't do it, but I hate the whole splitting up of a couple (and that's not necessarily a DH/DW thing, it can simply be the person that you went to the wedding with) utterly tedious. I would really rather spend the evening speaking to the person or group I went with - we are together so rarely as a family that it's really only christenings/weddings/funerals that we all manage to get together.

I'm perfectly capable of making small talk and am a confident person, but I go to a wedding to have fun and enjoy myself - not to spend the meal trying to make conversation with a random person I'll never meet again.

SirChenjin · 26/03/2013 14:28

That being said I will and do talk to others on the table as well!

Original poster
CrysPally · 26/03/2013 14:41

Blimey 2aminthemorning, that's sounds awful. Hope its all in the past for everyone now.

I think part of what lainiekazan said nailed it: if it works for everyone and they're all there to agree, who could object to the change? Its the idea of arriving at a table first, finding it not to your liking and changing other people's place cards around that really seems unthinkable to me.

OP posts:
MamaBear17 · 26/03/2013 15:12

Me and my husband once swapped places at a wedding because there was a beam underneath the table and hubby couldn't squeeze his legs under. He was very uncomfortable so I switched with him to stop him from fidgeting. The bride and groom were a little miffed that we had switched, but, that was because they had hired 'Singing Waiter' type entertainment. Except that they were disguised as wedding guests and one was supposed to have been sat next to me. His character was a 'sleezy single guy'l who was to spend the whole meal chatting me up and making inappropriate suggestions. When I moved I buggered up his act! Part of me felt bad, but part of me was horrified that they had singled me out as the victim. If he had chatted me up whilst I was sat next to my husband I would have just died of embarrassment. I'm not good in situations like that!

Boredwench · 26/03/2013 15:32

Yep its bloody rude...

I expect to be sat away from my other half, we're not biologically attached.

The best weddings on average I've been to are where people are initially split up. When guests end up sitting where they like they tend to form up into cliques that know each other and outsiders find that intimidating to approach and open up conversation. The cliques continue all night long as it moves to the bar and dance hall etc. Also it really helps when you have mis-matched family sizes. Obviously some thought goes into it and there are exceptions, but to categorically state it's rude of the B&G is tight and you don't have the moral right to start arranging things as you see fit.

GwendolineMaryLacey · 26/03/2013 15:45

No, I don't talk to DH all night. I don't want to talk to anyone and DH is chatty so he covers my silences and lets me people-watch in peace!

GwendolineMaryLacey · 26/03/2013 15:46

you don't have the moral right to start arranging things as you see fit.

Ha! I must have missed the bit where we went on to talk about prisons!

Swipe left for the next trending thread