Weddingbee boards

Ugh, so my family is kind of fighting over seating at our reception. Specifically, the head table.

So, here's the deal. We have a small-ish wedding party. Three on one side, two on the other, and two honorary guests (my aunt and uncle, who are like my other mom and dad). Everyone in our wedding party is family, and because my fiance and I are really family-oriented, we wanted to sit with our wedding party at the head table (including parents), but also, keep it rather intimate. It was important to both of us to have dinner hour to ourselves to celebrate with our family, and then, of course, the rest of the reception would be to mingle and dance (we're also spending the entire cocktail hour with our guests).

Here's the problem: While the one member of our wedding party with a SO is completely happy to not sit with her boyfriend for the dinner hour at the reception, my mom is REALLY upset we're not seating her boyfriend at the head table with her. Here's the other problem: everyone in our family strongly dislikes my mom's boyfriend. He's an alcoholic, and he tends to call people names and get nasty when he's drunk (he's actually ruined a few special family occasions with his behavior), but we continue to tolerate him. My mom keeps claiming that all her friends think I'm being really rude by not seating him at the head table with all of us, but everyone that I've discussed this with agrees with me - that we have the right to one hour of the reception to enjoy the moment with our families. 

So, I'm really torn. My mom is making this a really big deal, but we see it as, why can't she spend one hour without her boyfriend? What would everyone else do in my situation? Would you cave and just hope that the boyfriend can act civil, or would you stick to your guns, and tell your mom that she's going to have to deal with it (which is what I've been doing thus far). I'm almost tempted to tell her she can sit at the table we assigned her boyfriend to, but then I'd be really sad to not have her at our dinner table with us. I never expected this to be a problem!

Nope, dad's not in the picture (as in, won't even be at the wedding). Besides the one wedding party member, no one has an SO. Also, my aunt and uncle and my fiance's parents really want to sit with us (and vice versa of course), so really, breaking them off to another table isn't an option. Like I said, we're all really close (amy aunt and uncle raised me with my mom). So it really boils down to my mom's boyfriend being at the table or not at the table, which just really sucks :( 

As it stands now, my mom's boyfriend is sitting with my other uncle (my mom's brother) and his wife and some of my other cousins and close family members. That table is actually right next to the head table, which is why I'm having a hard time understanding why she's so upset over it.

Thank to everyone for answering!

After discussing it with friends and family all weekend, I've decided to stick to my guns and seat my mom's boyfriend at the other table (I actually couldn't find one person who was in favor of having him at the head table, but thanks anyway amandopolis!). The situation is actually a little more complicated because my mom knows everyone hates her boyfriend (he's really awful, and like I said, he's ruined a lot of family occasions with his behavior). I always compromise with my mom on this and invite him into our home and to family functions, even though he continuously ruins everything, so the way myself, my fiance (who also can't stand him) and my family see it as, we deserve our dinner hour without him at our wedding. We also specifically only seated nine people at the boyfriend's table, and we have extra chairs as well on standby, so my mom can always pull up a seat at his table if she'd like.

I also talked to my mom about it over the weekend, and she said she's still hurt, but after having some time to think about it, she sees my point and will deal with it because I've gone out of my way to compromise on a lot of other things with her.

So I guess it all worked out in the end (even though it was tough to get there!).