{"id":292,"date":"2021-08-31T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/2021\/08\/31\/seating-chart-is-love\/"},"modified":"2021-08-31T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T14:00:00","slug":"seating-chart-is-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/2021\/08\/31\/seating-chart-is-love\/","title":{"rendered":"The Seating Chart Is Not Optional. It Is Love."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>People act surprised when I mention a seating chart for a dinner of eight. Darling, eight is enough personalities to form a small United Nations. You do not need assigned seats at a cookout. You absolutely need them when your cousin Renee who sells insurance sits downwind of your friend who just got laid off.<\/p>\n<p>I learned this teaching middle school: proximity shapes conversation. Put the storyteller next to the shy guest who actually has stories. Put the new couple near someone warm, not someone competitive about wine.<\/p>\n<p>I write names on cardstock with a good pen. I leave a little fudge factor\u2014a seat that can absorb a late arrival. It looks fussy. It feels like care. My guests relax faster because nobody is doing mental geometry about where to land.<\/p>\n<p>After dessert I tell them the chart existed. They always laugh. They always admit it helped. Hospitality is architecture with napkins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have strong feelings about who sits next to whom, and they come from love\u2014not control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertaining"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}