Colleagues are a strange group to seat. They know each other well from nine to five, some of them barely know you outside it, and one of them may sign off on your pay rise next year. Put them in the wrong place and nothing dramatic happens. They just have a quieter, stiffer evening than everyone else, and you notice it in the photos.

Most of the work is deciding what kind of work guests you have. Then the seating follows.

First, sort your work guests

Go through the list and put each colleague into one of these groups:

  • Work friends. People you'd see at the weekend anyway. They're friends who happen to share an office, and they can sit with your other friends.
  • Close team. The four or five people you work with every day. They know each other, and they'll be happiest together.
  • Senior people. Your manager, their manager, a founder, a partner at the firm. Invited partly out of courtesy, and aware of it.
  • Former colleagues. People from an old job. They may know nobody else in the room, including each other.

Also write down, for each couple, which of you they work with. If you and your partner work at the same place, the list is longer and the politics are real. If one of you works somewhere with 30 invited colleagues and the other has three, those three need more care, not less.

One work table or several?

For most weddings the answer is one work table per team, not one for the whole company.

A round of 10 with your close team and their partners works well. They have their own jokes, the partners have usually met at a work party, and nobody has to explain who they are. The mistake is filling that table to 10 with whoever's left from work: the IT contractor you invited out of politeness, a colleague from another office, your boss. Now the table has two groups who don't mix, and one of them outranks the other.

If you have more than one table's worth of colleagues, split by team or by how well they know each other, not by seniority alone. Eight people from sales and eight from finance make two good tables. Sixteen people split into "juniors" and "managers" make one relaxed table and one awkward one.

Colleagues who are also genuine friends don't need to sit at a work table at all. Seat them with your university friends or your running club if that's where they'd rather be. Ask them if you're not sure.

Where to seat your boss

Your boss is a guest, not a VIP. They don't need to be near the head table, and most would rather not be. What they do want is to sit with someone they can talk to for three hours without it feeling like a meeting.

Good options, roughly in order:

  • With other guests of the same age and stage of life, such as your parents' friends or your aunts and uncles. Many bosses are happier there than at a table of their own staff.
  • With other senior colleagues and their partners, if you've invited several. A table of managers talking to each other is fine; it's managers mixed in with the people they manage that's hard work.
  • At the edge of the work table, if there's only one work table and they know the team well socially. Seat their partner next to someone friendly, since the partner likely knows nobody.

Avoid seating your boss:

  • Next to a colleague who's leaving, has just left, or is in a dispute. Add it as a keep-apart rule.
  • At a table of your drinking friends, unless you're happy for Monday to include a few stories.
  • Right by the speakers or the dance floor. They'll probably leave earlier than most, and they should be able to do it without crossing the room.

If both of you work for the same boss, seat them at a neutral table and not with either family. It keeps things even.

Their partners

Work partners are the guests most likely to spend the evening alone. The colleague knows everyone and talks shop; the partner knows the colleague.

Seat couples together, always. Then, when you fill a work table, check that each partner has at least one other person there they might get on with. Two partners who've met at the office party are already a pair. A partner who knows nobody at all is better at a mixed table, with their colleague, than at a table of eight people who talk about work. The plus-ones guide covers seating named and unnamed partners in more detail.

Colleagues who don't get along

Every office has at least one pair. Keep them at separate tables, and on different sides of the room if you can. They don't need to be at opposite ends; a table or two apart is enough, and it means neither of them feels demoted to the back.

Things worth a keep-apart rule:

  • Two colleagues in a live dispute or a recent falling-out
  • Someone who was just let go, and the manager who let them go
  • A colleague and their ex, if both are coming
  • Your boss and anyone applying for their job

Don't write "doesn't get on with Dave" on anything that gets printed. The rule lives in your chart, not on the escort cards.

Former colleagues and one-off work guests

A colleague from a job you left three years ago often knows only you. Treat them like any single guest who knows nobody: seat them with the most sociable table you have, or next to someone they share something with. The single guests guide has more on this.

If you invited two or three people from the same old job, they now have something in common, which makes them easy to seat together.

A worked example

Say you have 100 guests on 60-inch rounds, which seat 8 comfortably. That's 13 tables, and 16 of the guests are from work:

  • Your close team and their partners: 8 guests, one full table.
  • Your partner's team: 4 guests, two couples, seated at a mixed table with friends from university.
  • Your boss and their partner: seated with your parents' friends.
  • Two former colleagues: seated together at a friends table.

That's one work table, not two or three, and nobody from work is stranded. The 100-guest layout page shows the table count and the room those 13 rounds take.

Doing it in Seatwise

In Seatwise, work guests are easier to handle with a few labels:

  • Paste the list with a Group column, such as Priya Shah, Shah, Work - Sales or Tom Reid, Reid, Work - Former. Auto-seat tries to keep the same group together, so each team lands at the same table.
  • Keep couples in one Household. Auto-seat treats a household as a unit, so a colleague and their partner always sit together.
  • Add keep-apart rules for the pairs above. If a change later puts them at the same table, the Conflicts tab lists it.
  • Lock the table with your boss once it's right, then run Auto-seat again for everyone else. A locked table is left exactly as it is.
  • Use the Notes field for anything you need to remember but shouldn't print. Notes stay out of the find-your-seat board and the escort-card CSV. The Group column does go into the CSV, so keep group names plain.

The guest list stays in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, which matters when the chart includes a few honest notes about the office.

FAQ

Do I have to invite my boss to my wedding? No. If you invite your team, many people invite their direct manager as a courtesy, but it's your call.

Should coworkers sit together at a wedding? Usually yes, if they're one team who know each other. Colleagues from different teams or offices are better mixed in with other tables.

Where should my boss sit at my wedding? At a table where they know someone and can relax: with other senior colleagues, or with guests their own age. Not at the head table, and not next to anyone they manage who'd rather they weren't there.

What if my partner and I work at the same company? Seat your shared boss at a neutral table, split the colleagues by team rather than by whose guest they are, and keep an eye on who's placed near whom. The work politics come with you.