Need some advice from fellow Oregon brides on your feelings on planning seating tables vs. open seating at your reception. My parents are not on board with our wish to plan which tables our guests sit at. Where I live, in Florida, this is super common (and same for weddings I've attended recently in Arizona & Texas), but my parents feel its forced or uncomfortable.
FI and I think this is the best way to make guests feel considered/taken care of, plus it ensures our out of town family and friends (his family is all coming up from Texas, about 24 of them!) will be near each other and also get to mix with my family. Our reception includes a plated dinner with 185 guests, so from an organization perspective having seating ahead of time will help the servers too. We're seating the room for 190, so there's not extra room to do open seating and I don't really like the idea of planning tables for just our out of town guests and not the other 2/3 of the party.
What is the norm in Oregon these days? Is open seating appropriate for any reception dinner (I understand the buffets, outdoor bbqs, small weddings etc)? Or should I continue to insist to plan on table seatings out of courtesy for all our guest?