How Many Chairs Do I Order For My Wedding Ceremony?

When you select a blank canvas wedding venue, like French’s Point, you will need to work alongside a rental provider to streamline all your wedding weekend rentals. One of the rental items you will need to place on your order form is your ceremony chairs.

Select Your Chair Style

First, you will need to select the kind of chair that best fits the aesthetic of your venue and style of your wedding. We have found that 90% of our couples rent the White Resin Folding Garden Chairs from Wallace Events.

Choose Your Ceremony Location

Second, you will need to know which location you wish to get married at. French’s Point offers 8 different ceremony settings for you to tie the knot! Choose from the below:

The Retreat Gazebo – Seating Capacity 200+

The Retreat Oceanfront Lawn – Seating Capacity 200+

The Retreat Cobblestone Terrace – Seating Capacity 200+

The Retreat Conservatory – Seating Capacity 180

The Farm Gazebo – Seating Capacity 40

The Farm East Terrace – Seating Capacity 80

The Farm Private Beach – Seating Capacity 200+

Add Extra Chairs

Once you have chosen your ideal ceremony setting for your celebration, and chosen the chairs that best fit your space, you will want to consider the number of guests attending your celebration. If you are estimating 100 guests, you will want to reserve around 20 extra chairs on your rental order. This way you have those chairs reserved to your name in case your guest count skyrockets. You don’t want anyone to be chair-less!

Count Your RSVPs

As the wedding day draws near, and you have all your RSVPs returned to you, you will want to round up an extra 10 chairs and round to the nearest even number. When your planner sets up your ceremony chairs, you will want both sides of the aisle to have an even number of chairs. We also tell you to round up, because believe it or not, your guests never want to fill in every seat in the row! Some families have an uneven number attending.

A Helpful Tip:

To better fill every seat, we recommend assigning an usher to direct guests to the nearest open seat available when they arrive at the ceremony location.

Don’t Forget Your Ceremony Participants!

Now, if you have an officiant, singer, speaker, musician, or any special ceremonial tradition in your service, you will want to ask those who are participating if they will want a chair to sit in. Maybe you will need to sit during the reading or song, then you will want to add two or more chairs to your order, depending on the response from your ceremony personnel.

If You Chose the Gazebo at French’s Point

Lastly, if you have chosen to get married at the Gazebo at French’s Point, you not only want an even number of chairs, but you will want to keep in mind that the promenade on the right-hand side of the Gazebo can only fit 6 chairs across, and the promenade on the left-hand side of the Gazebo can fit anywhere from 6 to 10 comfortably. If you have a small guest count, we recommend 6 across on each side, if you have more than 120 guests attending, we recommend 8-10 chairs on the left-hand side of the promenade, and 6 on the right-hand side to move guests closer to the Gazebo for visual and sound reasons.

Learn More in A Pocket Guide to Planning Your Wedding Ceremony