Show HN: Better Seater – Wedding seating chart optimizer • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by teejae » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 12:32 PM UTC

pugworthy wrote: post #57

Do you account for not putting right handed people to the right of left handed people? But then maybe you do, if you want to play match maker. So many (imagined) social conditions here. Like A likes B, but B hates A. C and D should meet. E and F are a couple, but F and G broke up in college so it's awkward. H and I are divorced but still on good terms so it's OK. etc.

Yea for most of the social conditions, you can probably already use the "Separate/Link" feature.

Similar to hermitcrab's comment, I'm not sure about the right/left handed-ness. As I'm currently at table level, rather than seat level, I think it's something that can be figured out at the table level later.

Thanks for the feedback!

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

#92

Post by jerpint » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 12:53 PM UTC

vsnf wrote: post #78

atoav wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who organized very popular parties back in my teenage years: Whatever you optimize for, don't overdo it. Good social events are all about the right mixture between familar/safe and the unknown/dangerous. Match people too closely and you will bore people, I am not saying you should seat people randomly, but also consider which interests might add to each other.

> I am not saying you should seat people randomly With the exception of people who would throw hands at each other, this actually doesn't seem like an awful idea.

It is an awful idea because it will make most people sad not to be next to the ones they love, like spouses and friends

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

#93

Post by jerpint » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 12:56 PM UTC

I’m getting married tomorrow, and doing tables is no easy feat. The list constantly evolves, people come/cancel last minute, and sometimes you can play on multiple relationships for seating (e.g. one couple might be family but also friends with other guests attending)

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

#94

Post by verelo » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 12:58 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #64

verelo wrote: post #42

My wife and i just went through this for our wedding. A few remarks from that experience that might be helpful: 1. Versions matter - she'd often make a draft and want to tell me "ok tell me if you like this better than the previous version". Id just compare the cells above to the cells below. 2. We organized people based on common interests - these people are very into music, these are very into home renovations, the…

As someone who organized very popular parties back in my teenage years: Whatever you optimize for, don't overdo it. Good social events are all about the right mixture between familar/safe and the unknown/dangerous. Match people too closely and you will bore people, I am not saying you should seat people randomly, but also consider which interests might add to each other.

Yeah it’s very tricky and an art for sure. We spent a lot of time on it, i feel like we really nailed it because it was all about finding overlap but also creating introductions. We intentionally split up many friend groups because we knew they’d gravitate at the bar and dance floor anyway, so ideally getting them to meet new people over dinner was going to create an even bigger party - and it for sure did.

So yeah all to say, you’re right and it’s very unique for each gathering and its audience as to which approach you should take.

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

#95

Post by ramses0 » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #56

verelo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yeah i see the versioning now. I didnt get what was happening there before but i do now. This feels more to me like an audit log, which while helpful doesnt really do what i had hoped. Seeing 1 person move at a time isnt super practical, our edits were more like "these 10 people are now in different spots" and i just want to compare before to after, the in between while interesting isn't the visual im hoping to di…

Wedding Planners seems like the ideal target market for this. It's a task that must be a opinion for wedding planners, since the couple have to do it, and they put it off (cause its hard). Making it friction free for the couple (the planner pays, the couple use a planner assigned login), plus making it easy, allows the planner to gather the information from the couple, and then keep pushing plans at them. A simple gu…

Agree! There's TAM, TAC, and Churn at play here. Total Addressable Market, Traffic Acquisition Costs, and "Churn".

TAM - How many people can you serve "all people getting married || just planners"

TAC - How costly is it to make a sale your TAM? "word-of-mouth-individuals || trade-magazine-planners"

Churn - How many people will still be using your software one month or one year from now? "0% || 75%"

The numbers on the right hand side are soooo much better for a healthy business than on the left hand side.

Target this to party planners, wedding planners, event planners (at hotels, eg: Mariott, etc).

Assume you are the back-office magician for the "group events" manager at an all-inclusive hotel. You need to have super-on-point branding so that all GUESTS know to ask for "super-seating-chart-9000", which is only available to "party planning professionals", and has the appropriate QR codes, logos, URL's, etc.

Make sure that you have both paper and digital "intake forms" (99% of events managers will want to send them a spreadsheet, or copy/paste from a spreadsheet)... make sure that you have appropriate branding, etc (eg: a google sheets template with instructions on the first tab, etc.)

Your TAM for individuals is "everyone getting married this year" or "sometimes a conference or family reunion". Your TAM for planners is like 1/100000th and your TAC is higher (you have to convince them to spend a monthly retainer fee and/or pass along charges to the happy couple as if you were a vendor, eg: $50 seating chart fee invoice)... buuuuut each planner that you acquire is effectively recurring revenue (or recurring usage) compared to working directly with individuals, so your churn is much much lower.

The business you'd be getting into is kindof "fake back office support for luxury hotel event planners", which means do you branch out to also be kindof a vendor portal (eg: digital photo booths, printable/shippable table stands, digital name tags printing, etc.).

As a matter of fact, look around at conference/convention software (especially name tags!) as I remember hearing that's a surprisingly complicated market that no one really specializes in. Getting a foothold there would be helpful. Super-agree with parent comment "bruce" w.r.t. dietary restrictions, tagging/attributes, managing some sort of digital RSVP (live w/ the google sheet?) would be really helpful.

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

#96

Post by teejae » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

jerpint wrote: post #93

I’m getting married tomorrow, and doing tables is no easy feat. The list constantly evolves, people come/cancel last minute, and sometimes you can play on multiple relationships for seating (e.g. one couple might be family but also friends with other guests attending)

Congrats jerpint!

How many people are attending? Please feel free to use this tool if it happens to work for you. Would love to hear if you actually do use this.

But get some rest, and enjoy tomorrow!

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

#97

Post by couchand » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 1:09 PM UTC

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 add to what others have said, a big part for me is that you're asking folks to come. For the most part the social expectations of guests are pretty light: watch this quietly, light mingling and chatting, clap when it's time. Sitting down for a meal is unique in that guests must have a sustained social interaction with other guests.

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

#98

Post by BOOSTERHIDROGEN » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

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…

Could you expand the general case of that cost optimization?

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

#99

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 6:54 PM UTC

verelo wrote: post #42

My wife and i just went through this for our wedding. A few remarks from that experience that might be helpful: 1. Versions matter - she'd often make a draft and want to tell me "ok tell me if you like this better than the previous version". Id just compare the cells above to the cells below. 2. We organized people based on common interests - these people are very into music, these are very into home renovations, the…

[deleted]

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

#100

Post by susiecambria » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 11:54 PM UTC

jcpst wrote: post #90

CrazyStat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Similar to what we did. Went to the Outer Banks (North Carolina, USA) and eloped. Parents' friends owned a condo on the beach and we rented that for a song. Got married at the local jail by a magistrate. Had a lovely week away from work. A month or two later, my parents threw us a party so friends could meet the husband. (And it was gift payback time; I was the last of the kids to marry.)

A young couple I know will marry when their house is built. It will be at least several years. The more they see friends spending lots on weddings, the closer they are to the parents only wedding or eloping. I have to admit I'm nudging them just a little.