MAKING A FLOOR PLAN - HOW MUCH SPACE DO YOU NEED?

A floor plan is a way to map out your space, make sure you have enough room, and know where everything is going to go. Remember that you don’t just need to account for the tables people will be sitting at but also things like the dance floor, buffet tables, gift table, drink tables, and a bar.

If you have a caterer, a wedding planner, or are getting married in a full-service venue or at a restaurant, one of your vendors or venue staff may take care of creating a floor plan for you. If you don’t, you may be on your own.

To get started, you’ll need the floor plan from your venue, or the dimensions, along with useful information like where electrical outlets are located. After that, it’s mostly a bit of math.
HOW MUCH SPACE DO YOU NEED?


When it comes to laying out your space, it’s all about the numbers. Have you seated your guests far enough from each other that they can pull out their chairs?

•To calculate whether your venue is big enough for your guest list, keep this in mind: in a room, you need ten square feet of space per person for dining only, and fifteen square feet of space per person for dining and a dance floor with a band.
•Dance floors themselves should have roughly three square feet per guest. (That said, keep in mind that not everyone will be dancing, and you can work with whatever you’ve got.)
•Each person needs about two feet of table space for the most comfortable seating (for example, an eight-foot long rectangular table ideally should have four people per side).
•Chairs are between eighteen and twenty inches wide and deep. So from the edge of the table you need to leave eighteen inches per chair, and at least sixteen inches between the backs of chairs. (Allow thirty inches if your meal will be served by waiters instead of buffet style.)
•On buffets, allow two feet per food container. You will need one table and one staff person to prep and maintain the buffet per hundred guests.
•If you are serving family style, account for the amount of space the platters will occupy on the table. Also, consider keeping centerpieces very small, or cutting them entirely.