diff --git a/R/toTinytable.R b/R/toTinytable.R
index 6af20d7..7ee5985 100644
--- a/R/toTinytable.R
+++ b/R/toTinytable.R
@@ -58,7 +58,8 @@ toTinytable <- function(table, ...) {
   # entries in the first row of clabels are already colnames in out
   if (nrow(clabels) > 1) {
     spans <- rev(apply(clabels, 1, get_span)[1:(nrow(clabels) - 1)])
-    for (s in spans) {
+    for (i in (nrow(clabels) - 1):1) {
+      s <- get_span(clabels[i,])
       out <- tinytable::group_tt(out, j = s)
     }
   }