Dinner Seating Shuffler
Enter your guest list and table count, mark who must sit together or apart, then shuffle a fair seating chart in one tap. Lock any table's roster and print place cards. Works offline.
Built by the AbraCalc team
How to play
- Enter your guest list, set the number of tables and seats per table, and optionally add keep-together or keep-apart pairs.
- Tap Build seating chart — guests are distributed across tables while honoring your pairing constraints.
- Tap the lock icon on any table to freeze its roster, then tap Shuffle unlocked tables to reshuffle just the rest.
- When you're happy with the chart, tap Print place cards for a printable page with each guest's table number.
Dinner Seating Shuffler replaces the sticky-note-and-spreadsheet approach to hosting with a single shuffle button. Type in your guest list, set how many tables you have and how many seats each one holds, then optionally mark pairs who should sit together or pairs who need to stay apart — feuding relatives, exes, whatever your table politics require. One tap builds a full seating chart that respects those constraints wherever a valid arrangement exists, and any table can be locked so a reshuffle leaves its roster untouched while the rest of the room gets shuffled fresh. When the chart looks right, print a full page of place cards, one per guest, labeled with their table number, ready to fold and set out before anyone arrives.
Frequently asked questions
- What happens if a keep-apart request can't be satisfied, like too many people who all dislike each other?
- The shuffler tries hundreds of arrangements to satisfy every constraint; if a perfect layout truly isn't possible given your table sizes, it falls back to the best arrangement it found rather than freezing or crashing.
- Can I lock just one table and reshuffle everyone else?
- Yes. Tap the lock icon in any table's header — locked tables keep their exact guest list on every reshuffle while unlocked tables get a fresh, constraint-aware arrangement.
- Will the keep-together pairs always end up at the same table?
- Whenever there's enough seating capacity at a table for the pair plus anyone already assigned there, yes — the shuffler groups them together before placing the rest of the guest list.