Seat Your Guests in Style With These Unexpectedly Beautiful Arrangements

You’ve pictured yourself walking down the aisle toward your Prince Charming for as long as you remember. But what do you picture on either side of that aisle? Traditional rows of chairs or pews? Maybe you’ve thought about mixing it up with hay bales, benches, or lawn chairs. But even these can be arranged in a typical and boring way. We can almost guarantee you have not seen these unexpectedly beautiful seating arrangements!

Not your Momma’s Living Room

If the goal is to make your guests comfortable, look no further! Set up a living-room-like environment with sofas, couches, ottomans, tables, and chairs. You can designate a special cluster of the ‘living room’ for honored guests. Place taller stools and tables in the back of the area and shorter couches and ottomans in the front to allow for clear views for all.

Curving Down the Aisle

One aspect of traditional seating arrangements that is easy to take for granted is the shape of the aisle. Most aisles are straight and the seating aligns perpendicular to it, right up to the edge. Simply by creating a less uniform aisle, such as the curve seen above, your wedding seating arrangement immediately gains some interest. Ensure that the look still looks elegant and purposeful with flowers, a runner, or other decorations.

Circle of Love

Do you want to make sure everyone gets a good seat? Arrange the ceremony seating in a circle! Still honor close relatives by reserving their seats in the innermost circle. Allow guests to choose their own seats in the other circles. This arrangement naturally enforces unity and gives each guest a clear view of the action. Also, the members of the wedding can each come in from different aisles to make the procession and recession a little unusual.

Curly Q

If you like the idea of a circular chair arrangement, but even that shape is too traditional for you, try an unraveling circle of chairs. Instead of having multiple rings of chairs, set up individual chairs in one long curving row that wraps around the altar in the middle. This arrangement creates an extremely neat aisle as each individual walking down it will walk past every single guest. Such seating is best suited for smaller weddings or the walk down the aisle would be never-endingly long.

Suitably Square

For larger weddings, square seating is a good way to have a unique shaped while maintaining efficiency. Slight curvature will be necessary at the corners to successfully achieve this shape. Be sure to provide multiple aisles so that guests can easily enter and exit. Some sort of raised stage may also be helpful in order for all the guests to have a view.

Lovely Lopsided

No need to worry if your venue a little less than proportional — there’s a seating arrangement for that! You can set up traditional rows of individual seats, but then face the two groups of seating in slightly different directions. Make sure there is still enough room for an aisle to lead up to the altar. Also, check each seat to see if the unusual direction of the chairs still faces comfortably toward to altar. Otherwise, you have total freedom to situate the seating in any way you prefer and that fits your venue.

A Whole New World

This seating arrangement is not for the faint of heart. It will also not be very appropriate if a sizeable number of your guests are elderly and would struggle to sit on the ground. But if you have a youthful and adventurous bunch, sit them on colorful blankets for a form of wedding seating like no other.

Eclectic Mix

The arrangement itself is not that unexpected- straight rows of individual chairs. But the incredibly uniqueness of every chair gives this form of seating an unusual appearance, making it deserving of the classification.

The Lack Thereof

Perhaps the most unusual seating arrangement of them all is the one without any. This works in very limited scenarios, but presents the ultimate form of unexpected seating. Be considerate of your guests and don’t allow the wedding to extend for more than a half-hour or so. But you, your groom, the officiant, and the wedding party stand for the whole ceremony anyway, there’s no reason your guests can’t join you!

What do you think? After seeing all these neat and unexpectedly beautiful ideas, it’s going to be hard to settle for the traditional variety. No matter your venue, budget, or guest demographic, you can find a unique seating arrangement for your wedding!