Weddingbee boards

I had 160 guests and made my seating chart in about 1-2 hours. I just made a spreadsheet in excel and played around with cutting/pasting the names in various table configurations. As long as there is at least 3 people that can chat at each table, it was fine. Ask your parents and in laws who they exactly want to sit with - my MIL kept changing her mind. That was the only tricky part.

I actually enjoyed doing our seating chart. For 230 people, I spent about 2 hours grouping them with my husband and arranging the tables took me about 3 hours. Not all in one day. :-) I had the guest list on a spread sheet grouped by "my college friends, husbands mom's family, my dallas friends," etc. Along with the number in their party. I had a diagram of the tables in the venue, and I numbered each one. I just started assigning numbers to each group until tables got filled--starting with the wedding party and family, and working outward. I do have to say that I scrapped the table cards for each guest. I'd planned to add names and table numbers to the backs of my favor tags, but that just didn't work. So I had my house party and coordinator stand at the doors of the reception hall to tell people which table they were at. It seemed to work well. It was an intimidating task, but I had more fun than I thought I would, and everyone seemed to enjoy where they were placed. 

I also want to suggest something I saw here on the 'bee before - weddingwire.com has a seating organizer! You can make a mockup of your room and drag your guests onto their tables. I'm a very visual person, so this helped me a lot more than a simple excel spredsheet. And it's free!

I actually enjoy doing this kind of thing.  I don't think it should take too long.