AIBU to do this for our wedding seating plan?

[coralpig]

Starting the special hell that is wedding seating plans. Fiancé and I are from radically different cultures. All heard speak English (just about) but some far better than others.

I have two options

A) seat people only with those that they know or are similar to in terms of background and culture.

B) do some gentle mixing- people with similar personalities but from different backgrounds who may well get on but don't know each other.

My initial thought was to go for A but my fiancé pointed out that would essentially mean racially segregating the room. He thinks we should go for B.

What would you prefer as a wedding guest?

We had tables of 8, and each table had all a similar type of people (work friends or parents' friends etc.) but each table was split half and half "mine" and "DH's". So there would be 4 of my work friends and 4 of DH's work friends on a table.

Then I put similar tables near to one another - so that all the work friend tables were grouped together, so people who knew each other from my work felt as though they were still near their friends and could turn and chat.

Then all the parental friends (who also happened to slightly older people) were grouped together but mixed up over 2 or 3 tables.

Ditto family and personal friends.

It worked really well, loads of conversation, in fact it got quite uproarious (in a good way). It felt like everyone was mixing, got to have fun with old friends and meet some new people too.

B. If one isn't grown up enough to enjoy chatting with new extended family for 60 or 90 minutes one should stay home. Have people no curiosity or sociability, that meeting & conversing with new acquaintaces is seen as such an onerous chore?

if great aunt Mavis is very straight laced and delicate, it's probably best not to sit her next to your husbands room mate from uni who's party piece is getting his todger out and tucking it between his legs whilst screeching 'I'm a laaaadyyyyy'.

In this case I think you actually should sit them together - both to save anyone else from having to sit with either of them, and for the amusement value