The problem
At every wedding we shot we saw the same scene: the seating plan in a spreadsheet, printed on paper, crossed out in pen. One aunt cannot sit near another, the best man was moved, four people cancelled three days before.
Every change means a new printout and another round of phone calls. Whoever holds the spreadsheet becomes the bottleneck, and the plan the venue staff hold is almost never the latest one.
Tools for this exist, but they are in English, require an account and charge per guest. For a two-hundred-person wedding in Mostar that is the wrong tool at the wrong price.
What we built
A browser application where tables are arranged by dragging, guests are added from a phone, and the plan is shared by link. Whoever opens the link sees the current state — there is no outdated version.
Drag to arrange
Round and long tables, the room laid out as it actually is. A guest is dragged from one table to another.
Share by link
No account needed for those who only look. Family opens the link and sees where they sit.
Changes until the last day
Cancellations arrive up to the morning before. A change is one drag, not a new printout.
Print for the venue
When everything is settled, it produces a clean per-table list for the floor staff.
Three decisions that shaped it
No account for guests
Family who only need to see where they sit will not create an account. Registration is only for the couple; everyone else gets a link that works immediately.
In our language
Not a translation of a foreign tool but one written for the weddings held here — best men, family on both sides, two hundred people as the norm.
Works on a phone
Guests get added while waiting at the photographer or in the car outside the venue. If it does not work with a thumb on a phone, it does not work.
How it is built
Firebase for data and sign-in, Netlify for hosting. No server to maintain and no monthly cost that grows before the product earns anything.
Changes appear immediately for everyone viewing the same plan. That is not decoration — when two people arrange the same plan from two phones, a lagging version causes worse confusion than a spreadsheet.
Why this sits on a photo studio site
We saw the problem because we shot weddings. Had we not been in the room, we would not have known that whoever holds the spreadsheet becomes the bottleneck.
We do the same for others: get far enough into the work to see where it snags, then build what fixes it — whether that is photography, a tool, or both.
Have a similar problem?
If your work has a step everyone does by hand because no tool exists — that is usually where the most is gained.