We are doing assigned tables, but not assigned seats. For the seating cards should we put couples on one card or should each person get their own card? We may just post a list, but the same question applies. Couples listed together or on different lines?
Re: Seating Cards: One for each person or put couples on one?
You're going to seat a 7 year old away from his parents? Have you mentioned this to parents yet? Kids' tables at weddings, in my experience, are usually a terrible idea. You get much better behaved kids at dinner when they have some supervision.
OP, I'm with everyone else. Couples if it's buffet, individual if there's an entree selection.
When I was 7, if you put me with my parents I would have been pissed. I would have rather sat with my older brother or I would have felt left out. It's not like he is 3. I was making the point that we have no really little kids. We don't have any kids tables. I wouldn't consider a 13 year old a kid, and that is the next youngest age we have. We are a very close family, and the 7 year old will be sitting with his brother and other cousins he knows very well. His mom and dad will be 6 feet away at another table. His mom and dad (my uncle) have been consulted and agreed that this would make him feel more included. I even asked if the 17 y/o daughter would prefer to be with her brothers or with the other cousins her age and she went with the later. She'll be one table over as well.
Also, in our family small children are not invited to weddings. Bar and Bat Mitzvahs are for kids. Weddings are for teens and up generally. In this case, we couldn't leave one sibling out, and he is a first cousin. If his parents thought he couldn't behave, they wouldn't be bringing him.
Are 13-16 year olds really children? Not to me. If you can't behave as a 15 year old at a wedding, your parents have done something wrong. To me our wedding only has ONE child that will be attending. Sitting teenagers with their parents is like a punishment. Maybe if the young people in your family don't all know each other it would be different. But when you grow up hanging out and babysitting these people and you know they can behave like the young adults they are, it isn't any problem.
Another pet peeve. "Kids Meals" for teenagers. Seriously, if you put chicken fingers in front of me as a 15 year old when adults got steak, I would think you were an idiot.
Not only that, parents don't always want to spend their time at a wedding supervising their small children. Some (not all, but some) are willing to let their kids, say ages 7 and up, sit at kid's tables with chaperones (who are not and should not be family teenagers) so that they can talk to other adults without being interrupted by the need to answer or discipline their children. This is not to say that this works for everyone, but don't automatically assume that it works for no one.