Bring Your Seating Chart to Brunchie — Any Format, Any Source

Your seating chart already exists somewhere

Maybe it's a PDF floor plan your venue emailed last week. Maybe it's a spreadsheet your planner shared with table assignments in column D. Maybe it's a photo of a whiteboard from the venue walkthrough where you sketched out the room. Or maybe it's a screenshot from another tool you've outgrown.

Whatever format it's in, whatever tool created it — you shouldn't have to start from scratch. Brunchie imports seating charts from any source and turns them into interactive, editable layouts you can work with immediately.

This post covers every supported format and how each import works.

PDF floor plans

This is the most common scenario. Your venue or coordinator sends a PDF showing the room layout — tables, dance floor, bar, stage, buffet stations. It's a static document that looks nice but doesn't let you do anything.

Upload the PDF to Brunchie and the AI reads it. It detects tables (round, rectangular, square), estimates seat counts based on size, identifies non-table elements like the dance floor and bar, and preserves the spatial layout. You get an interactive seating chart that matches the venue's own floor plan.

After the AI extraction, you review everything before it's saved. Adjust seat counts, rename tables, remove false detections. Then confirm and start assigning guests.

For a deep dive into how the AI extraction works, read our post on how AI reads your seating chart PDF.

What makes a good PDF import

• Architectural floor plans with clean lines and labeled tables produce the best results
• Digital diagrams from presentation or design software work well
• Scanned sketches work too, though you may need more manual adjustments
• Higher resolution PDFs give the AI more to work with

Photos and images

Not everything starts as a polished PDF. Sometimes the seating chart exists as:

• A photo of a whiteboard from a planning session
• A snapshot of a hand-drawn sketch on paper
• A screenshot from a tool you can't export from
• A photo of the venue's printed floor plan hanging on their wall

Brunchie accepts image uploads (JPG, PNG) and applies the same AI analysis. The AI identifies table shapes, positions, and labels from the image, then creates the corresponding interactive layout.

Photos of hand-drawn layouts require a bit more cleanup during the review step, but the alternative is recreating everything from scratch — so even an imperfect detection saves significant time.

Excel and CSV files

If your seating chart is a spreadsheet — tables, capacities, and guest-to-table assignments — that's a different kind of import, but equally supported.

Upload your Excel (.xlsx) or CSV file from the New Seating Chart form. The seating-chart pipeline reads tables and capacities and lays them out on the canvas; if guest emails in the spreadsheet match guests already on your People tab, those guests are assigned to their tables automatically. Guest records aren't created from the spreadsheet today — bring guests in via the paste path first (see below), then run the seating import.

This is particularly useful when:

• Your planner sends a layout with table assignments already decided
• You've been managing seating in a spreadsheet and want to move to a visual tool
• You need to seed an initial table layout before fine-tuning with drag-drop

For the guest-list path that pairs with this, see bringing an Excel guest list into Brunchie — drop your .xlsx / .csv / .pdf / screenshot into the Upload file tab and Brunchie's AI reads it; paste-from-spreadsheet still works for quick column copies.

From other planning tools

If you've been using another planning tool and want to switch, the path depends on what you can export.

• CSV export: Most tools let you export guest lists as CSV. Import that directly.
• PDF export: If the tool exports a visual floor plan as PDF, use the PDF import.
• Screenshot: If all else fails, take a screenshot of the seating layout and upload it as an image.

You don't lose your work when you switch tools. You bring it with you.

Combining multiple sources

Real-world wedding planning rarely has everything in one place. You might have the venue's PDF floor plan, your planner's Excel file with guest assignments, and a handful of guests you've added since.

The right sequence: import once to create the chart, then edit from there. Use the PDF to establish the room layout when you create the seating chart — that's when the import runs as part of the New Seating Chart form. Once the chart exists, add guests and move them around with drag-drop on the canvas. If your planner's spreadsheet has guest-to-table assignments you want to bring in, you can do a second import via the Edit Seating Chart page, but know that this fully replaces the existing tables and assignments — it's a clean slate, not a merge. So get the room layout right first, then work within it.

The upshot: you can't layer two separate file imports on one chart without overwriting the first. The workflow is import → review → drag-drop from there.

The import-to-action pipeline

What makes Brunchie's import different from simply uploading a file is what happens after. Your imported data isn't just stored — it's immediately actionable.

• Imported guests can be dragged to tables on the visual chart
• Imported tables can be rearranged, resized, and renamed
• Imported layouts can be shared via link with your coordinator
• Everything works on mobile, so you can review imports at the venue

This is the gap most tools miss. They either handle import well but have a weak editor, or they have a great editor but no import. The whole point is the connection — getting your existing data into a tool that lets you actually work with it.

After import: auto-assign

If you imported a room layout from PDF but haven't assigned guests yet, smart auto-assign can do the heavy lifting. It places guests based on party groupings and table capacities, giving you a solid first draft in seconds. Then you fine-tune manually.

If you imported guests with table assignments from a spreadsheet, those assignments are already in place. You can still run auto-assign on any unassigned guests.

What's coming next

Brunchie's import capabilities continue to expand. Future updates will include support for importing fixture layouts — predefined room configurations from popular venues — so you can skip even the PDF step if your venue is already in the system.

We're also improving the AI's detection accuracy for hand-drawn layouts and low-resolution images, making the photo import path even more reliable.

The philosophy: meet you where you are

Wedding planning doesn't start when you open a new tool. It starts with the guest list your mom texted, the floor plan your venue emailed, the budget your partner tracked in a spreadsheet. A good tool doesn't ask you to abandon all of that and start fresh. It takes what you have and makes it better.

That's what import is really about. Not a feature checkbox — a promise that your existing work has value and won't be wasted.

Bring your seating chart — whatever format, whatever source — to brunchie.app. For the full guide on seating charts, visit our seating chart guide. For all import options, see the importing data guide.