By Bridget Mora

It is very exciting as the replies to your wedding invitation start to arrive in your mailbox. As you mark off the acceptances on your master list, the seating chart is probably the furthest thing from your mind. But be prepared, because once the final headcount is in, it will be time to tackle one of the most dreaded tasks in wedding planning.

You may wonder why you should even bother with arranging a seating chart. The reason is that someone has to decide where everyone will sit. Either you do your duty as the host, or your guests will be left to fend for themselves. I once attended a wedding without planned seating, and instead of mingling during the cocktail hour, the guests were going around tipping in chairs to reserve spots for their families. It was like an adult version of musical chairs, and it definitely detracted from the reception. If the bride and groom had done their job, most of the people who wanted to be together at dinner already would have been arranged that way.

The place to start is with the head table. First of all, you have to decide if you want the traditional long table with the bride, groom, and their attendants, or the trendier Sweetheart table for just the bride and groom. If my vote counts for anything, I would nix the Sweetheart table, because it makes the bride and groom unapproachable. They will have plenty of time to be alone together on the honeymoon; the wedding reception is a good time to see your guests.

Typically, there is a hierarchy of tables at a wedding reception. The ones closest to the bride and groom are considered to be prime real estate, and are usually reserved for immediate family like parents, grandparents, and siblings (unless they are attendants, in which case they would sit at the head table). With all of the variables in family configurations these days, it is not uncommon to have three or four tables that share equal honor.

For instance, if the bride’s parents are divorced, you would certainly not seat them together. Each should head their own table, seated with their spouses and other close relatives or dear friends. Do your best to maintain equal proximity between the newlyweds’ table and the tables seating the assorted parents to avoid any appearance of favoritism or snubbing. (People can be awfully touchy about where they are seated! Come to think of it, that might be why some couples try to wash their hands of it altogether.)

The groups will radiate out from there. Usually close friends of your parents will be seated closer to the head table than personal friends of the bride and groom. The far back corner by the kitchen is designated for the people from your office that you only invited out of obligation. Of course, sometimes those peripheral tables end up being where the most fun is taking place during the dinner.

A good rule of thumb is to mix groups of people from your different spheres. So that nobody has to dine with total strangers, it is nice to put a married couple with another couple that they already know, and then two more that they do not. Please do not set aside a table just for singles – it makes them feel like leftovers. Instead, mix a couple of single guests in with the pairs at each table.

One of your primary duties at a host is to put together people who will enjoy each other’s company. You want to spark lively conversation. For example, if you know that your mother’s best friend and your fiance’s aunt both love jewelry, seat them together. They will enjoy complimenting each other on their wedding jewelry, chatting about the wedding jewelry on the other guests, and so forth. On the flip side, if you know that two guests have very strong, opposite views on a subject like politics, put them at tables across the room from one another.

Love is in the air at a wedding, and while you don’t want to be overtly matchmaking, there is nothing wrong with seating together two singles that you think might fall for each other. Lots of married couples meet their mate at weddings. If your clever seating assignment played a part in inspiring a new romance, maybe that would take some of the sting out of dealing with the seating chart!

About the Author: Bridget writes extensively about weddings,jewelry and fashion for http://www.silverlandjewelry.com where you can shop for beautiful affordable

wedding jewelry

.

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Improve Your Golf Game with more than One Golf Course

by

Bobby Cruz

There you are, the newest member of the golf retirement community, putting to engineer that innocent looking little white ball into the black hole at last. The soft sea breeze stroking your aching back after that one wild swipe at the dodgy little Callaway golf ball when you thought no one was watching. And something else is bothering you. You know what it is, but you don’t want to acknowledge it, because you don’t know what to do about it. You don’t yearn for the latest golf swing trainer, golf cart accessory or other related retirement gift. It is something entirely different that is tap-tap-tapping away at your thoughts.

Too many greens to play, too many beautiful community golf courses whispering their names to you in that salty wind coming in from the sea. And there is only one you. With a wife that is adamant to have her say in the unfolding need for more than just the one golf course in one lifetime.As that wise old German psychologist mentioned in quiet desperation, women are different. They are most likely aliens from a far off galaxy where there are no open green, gated golf course communities that are synonymous with heavenly pleasures. In that galaxy the rule has been laid down that a specimen from the female species will always have the need to have an own home where the specimen can indulge in home making. A serious golfer, in his advanced cosmic state, knows that it is not about the house, it is all about the green course. She will not let go. She will not understand. She will want her own home to beautify. She will want a verandah where she and her friends from that far off galaxy can sit down and drink tea while watching whales in the sea, or buffalos grazing, or soft green hills against pure blue heavens. That is what she wants, and you can just as well go and drown yourself with your beloved golf bag in that water hole at the 16th. She will not budge.But then, to your relief, you remember that phrase of the great Chinese writer, or it could be an Australian, and you know that it is likely that you are making a mistake about this great man’s background, but what he said was something like ‘it is in the play that I’ll catch the conscience of the queen’…Careful planning, my golfing mate, is what will save the day. Those were the words of those great and advanced guys that roamed the great plains of ancient courses long long ago. Give the specimen a house overlooking the greens. There she can buy curtains to her liking, plant flowers in clay pots, read JM Coetzee or Ian McEwan whilst listening to Mozart. And the little wifey with her specimen friends can sit on the verandah, laughing and spilling tea while they watch your approach to do something to that little white ball that once again moved for only a few inches (the English), or centimeters (the rest of the world).The plain truth is that this ancient wisdom of golfers now swinging clubs in the pinkish clouds at days end, only provides a partial answer to the greater issue. You know that if you can’t get the swing right on this open green, there are surely so many other beautiful retirement community golf courses. Courses that will appreciate your next swing, which will be the one that Ernie Els aspires to.The thing is, your specimen has now settled into her golf course community house overlooking the 18th hole. Since buying that piece of golf real estate for her, she happily opens the front door at your disheveled return from the game, and she always displays those bright twinkling eyes, shining with mischievousness. Now you know that she found something so great or amusing in that house overlooking the 18th hole that she will not even consider moving to a different, more lenient course.Now, this is the moment that I will come to your rescue. I have given that game up because I do not yet want to play it in the day end pinkish clouds before it really is time to do so, on account of heart attacking golfing seizures. So I would rather sell you and your specimen a house at a gated, retirement golf community estate of her liking. At the same time I would suggest that you get your specimen’s best friend to maneuver her golfing husband to one of the other beautiful courses. Doing so, you can explain, they can visit each other, go to art galleries, coffee shops, mesmerizing shopping centers and they can even sit on the verandah overlooking the very first hole, laughing their buds and their butts off, …so long as you and your golfing friend can have another go at another course where nobody can possibly know your real handicap.Just don’t turn your eyes towards all the verandahs of all the other houses in the gated golf community, with all the other specimens rolling and reeling in laughter over their little cups of tea.It will only prolong that fight of dwarfing inches towards the shrinking little black hole of redemption.

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Improve Your Golf Game with more than One Golf Course}