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Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

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Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#81

Post by n4r9 »

lonesword wrote: post #80

Genuine question - why assign seats at all? In my country (weddings with 200+ people are the norm) people sit wherever they want. In the US, you wouldn't assign seating at a house party (right?), so why do that for a wedding, since a wedding is after all just a more expensive party?

Weddings are usually somewhat formal. Formal events benefit from guidance to reassure guests. For example, a dress code helps you narrow down your choices if you have no idea what to wear. Similarly, a seating plan is great for someone that is there on their own and has no idea who they can sit next to.

The trick is to combine guidance with a relaxed atmosphere where it's fine to ignore it. Your dress code might say "black tie", but it's great if someone turns up in jeans because that's what makes them comfortable.

Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#82

Post by gosub100 »

vekker wrote: post #65

Pitching in as yet another dev who also thought of implementing this :) There were just too many constraints for it to be feasible as a web app in our case. Examples of some of those constraints that make it difficult: * different table sizes, each with a min. and max. seats * every table has a "head of table", which has to face the bridal couple * we preferred couples/genders were mixed at every table, not sitting n…

Could the "different table sizes" problem be solved by setting all tables to a maximum size while adding a "null person" to the imaginary seats at smaller tables?

Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#83

Post by hermitcrab »

lonesword wrote: post #80

Genuine question - why assign seats at all? In my country (weddings with 200+ people are the norm) people sit wherever they want. In the US, you wouldn't assign seating at a house party (right?), so why do that for a wedding, since a wedding is after all just a more expensive party?

This varies a lot from country-to-country[1], by 'social class' (for want of a better word) and event type.

[1]And even within countries. I believe it varies from state to state in the US.

Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#84

Post by ge0ffrey »

wayfinder wrote: post #63

If anyone wants to build this by themselves, I recommend using an optimization solver library like OptaPlanner. It basically implements standard optimization algorithms you can read in academic papers (which are interesting to read!) so you don’t have to. You can probably write a basic planner in under an hour with all the constraints you can think of. You can just continue to fiddle with the constraints and weights…

Thanks for the kind words about OptaPlanner. We've forked OptaPlanner as Timefold. We don't have a wedding seating example in timefold-quickstarts, yet.

Someone did an wedding seating planning implementation 10 years ago: https://github.com/juanignaciosl/wedding-tables-planner but that's going to be very stale (still DRL files etc). It's probably better to start from the school-timetabling use-case in timefold-quickstarts and adjust that to your needs.

Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#85

Post by ge0ffrey »

l33tman wrote: post #75
teejae wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I went with Optaplanner, which is definitely more "user friendly". Prioritization of parties is on the roadmap, related to table ranking. Were you thinking of prioritization in a different manner? How were you thinking about "someone getting left out"? Thanks for the thoughts!

Do any of you happen to have any thoughts wrgds to OR-tools vs optaplanner? I've been trying to use OR-tools for a vehicle routing problem (with lots of constraints) and found it is really bad at finding solutions in our case, and it has only auto-gen documentation more or less, very sparse set of examples and a single dev supporting on the forums it seems (still thankful for that it's open source and HAS some suppor…

Take a look at the two Timefold (continuation/fork of OptaPlanner, open source Apache License) quickstarts for vehicle routing: https://github.com/TimefoldAI/timefold-quickstarts/tree/stab...

We regularly answer questions on StackOverflow if you run into any issues with it.

Disclaimer: I am part of the team behind OptaPlanner/Timefold.

Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#86

Post by veddox »

lonesword wrote: post #80

Genuine question - why assign seats at all? In my country (weddings with 200+ people are the norm) people sit wherever they want. In the US, you wouldn't assign seating at a house party (right?), so why do that for a wedding, since a wedding is after all just a more expensive party?

To allow different circles of friends to sit together.

At the weddings I've been at (usually 100-150 guests), there would be families and relatives of the groom and bride, then their school friends, church friends, university friends, etc. - anything up to a dozen different groups of people who know each other but not the other guests. So a seating plan allows these friends to enjoy the party together. It doesn't prohibit them from getting to know the other guests, but offers a bit of a safe space with people the hosts know they will get along with.

(Additionally, in many cases, these groups of friends may not have seen each other for several years, e.g. since their school days, and appreciate the opportunity to catch up.)

Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#87

Post by teejae »

lonesword wrote: post #80

Genuine question - why assign seats at all? In my country (weddings with 200+ people are the norm) people sit wherever they want. In the US, you wouldn't assign seating at a house party (right?), so why do that for a wedding, since a wedding is after all just a more expensive party?

As others have mentioned, this is very culturally dependent. And culture isn't necessarily country or region. Different types of people like different things. This particular app is designed for those times when you need more assignment, for whatever reason.

Hope that makes sense!

Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#88

Post by teejae »

ge0ffrey wrote: post #84
wayfinder wrote: post #63

If anyone wants to build this by themselves, I recommend using an optimization solver library like OptaPlanner. It basically implements standard optimization algorithms you can read in academic papers (which are interesting to read!) so you don’t have to. You can probably write a basic planner in under an hour with all the constraints you can think of. You can just continue to fiddle with the constraints and weights…

Thanks for the kind words about OptaPlanner. We've forked OptaPlanner as Timefold. We don't have a wedding seating example in timefold-quickstarts, yet. Someone did an wedding seating planning implementation 10 years ago: https://github.com/juanignaciosl/wedding-tables-planner but that's going to be very stale (still DRL files etc). It's probably better to start from the school-timetabling use-case in timefold-quicks…

Thanks a lot for all the development of Optaplanner over the years! Your work is really amazing and valuable.

Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#89

Post by teejae »

hyperman1 wrote: post #79

We had a few constraints based on table location: Person notorious to get drunk was out of sight of the bar. Person with medical problem close to the toilets. Young nephew prone to pick candy from jar was diagonally seated to a candy jar, because the whole family loves to see al the strange ploys he came up with to 'randomly' pass the jar and take a candy. Yes we love him :-) We also seated groups according to prefer…

Definitely valuable constraints!

I'll definitely have to think about how to incorporate such things in a simple to use manner.

Re: Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer

#90

Post by jcpst »

CrazyStat wrote: post #43
jcadam wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wife and I were broke college students when we got married. Reception consisted of cake and refreshments (no meal) in the basement of the church after the ceremony -- no assigned seating. Then a few nights in a local (though pretty nice) B&B for the 'honeymoon.' Still spent too much on everything, should have just blown off the fancy ceremony and drove to Vegas :)

Wife and I were broke grad students when we got married. Reception was standardish (dinner, dancing, cake—her family paid for it). Honeymoon was a conference she was going to in San Diego.

I like these stories. I had a budget of $350 for our marriage and honeymoon. That was including gas money.

We did the honeymoon first though- went to a rural town and stayed at a b&b while we waited the three days for the marriage license. Then went out for ice cream and drove home.

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