Weddings are one of those unusual occasions when people forced to sit down and eat a meal with complete strangers. This situation does occur elsewhere of course – dinner parties for example. However with a dinner party the key difference is you will also be sitting down with the host – the one person who (presumably) knows everyone and can keep the conversation flowing. Friendly though the bride and groom may be though it’s tricky to co-ordinate every conversation in the room with 100+ people from the distance of the top table.
Of course there are generally people you know on your table, the bride and groom normally very kindly put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that this is the case, but apparently the whole point of the wedding breakfast is to have the chance to meet new people and therefore separate friends slightly from one another, leaving the person you know and DO want to speak to always just a few short, inaudible seats away.
The thing is though that, much as I’m always happy to meet new people and certainly enjoy a good meal, I don’t really want to combine those two ideas and eat a meal with people I don’t know. People I do know and like, yes. People I don’t know and are STILL talking about the fact that a few minutes before I wore a vaguely comedic hat, not so much. I’ve invested time and considerable energy already finding people that I do know and actually like and that in return also tolerate me, and those are the people in whose company a nice meal remains a nice meal.
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Created using Table Planning software by www.something-blue.co.uk
What really bugs me though is when the table plans are arranged boy girl boy girl. Again I don’t mind of course if the girls either side of me are people I know and like, I don’t even object too hard when one of them is my wife, but when surrounded on either side by women I don’t know (particularly if they happen to be vaguely attractive) I naturally revert to my 15 year old self, capable mostly of nodding whilst my attempts to say something cool and interesting turn inevitably into some form of verbal diarrhoea, not enhanced by the fact that by this point I will, in all likelihood, also be sweating profusely. It’s always awkward when you recognise that the conversation has turned from the initial tone of interest from the other person to a tone of pity and/or disgust. It’s also coincidentally the same tone that greets me when I start to dance at a wedding.
Now don’t get me wrong, I recognise that creating a seating plan is very tricky and that there’s always uncle Tom the door-to-door watermelon salesman who loves to talk about his work that somebody must sit with even if we’d rather they didn’t. Then of course there’s lewd cousin Jim who also likes to talk about his watermelons but in an entirely different context. Sometimes we have to take the bullet and accept that watermelon talk is going to be on the cards, but I can only hope that there’s a familiar face on the other side of me to make up for it. I also recognise that occasionally I might happen to be sat next to a stranger with whom I happen to get on spectacularly – I daresay even someone with whom I then go on to strike up a brand new friendship. However these flukey, once in a blue moon occasions scarcely make up for the far more common awkward silences with nothing to talk about nor the dull but lively chat from one particular seat as a starter of fresh watermelon is presented to our table.
So if you’re going to seat friends apart from each other at least have the common decency to ensure table centrepieces are short enough to be able to mouth “help me” across the table to your friend or alternatively make sure you hold your wedding where phone signal is readily available so you can at least keep one eye on the football scores or look up interesting facts about watermelons to be able to fein interest. But most of all just let us have some food, drinks and laughs with our mates and say no to strangers.
