How to Keep Track of Your Guests Easily and Pain-Free
Once you’ve started locking and loading vendors, planning out fashion for yourself and your crew, considering the type of ceremony you’ll want, and knocking some of those tedious to-dos off your list, the planning detail you’ll need to conquer soon enough is filing out your guest list. After all, the number of guests you’ll have at your wedding can be the biggest budget killer. And that’s fine, you’ll want to have your favorite people there to witness everything and share in the most special day of your life, so just take a breath, sip some water (or vodka, whatever quells the nerves), and start putting those preliminary invite lists together.
Remember that even though your wedding day is YOUR wedding day, you’ll likely need to share some of those guest seats with your parents’ people - be it colleagues, childhood friends, or family members who you rarely, if ever, see. This is especially true if your family is contributing to the wedding costs. Once you’ve asked your families for their respective rosters (which, speaking from experience, can take FOREVER, so don’t wait too long to make those asks), you’ll want to compare it to your own lists, see if there are any duplicates, and then winnow away to a place where you feel comfortable. If leaving anyone off is particularly plaguing to you, then don’t do it - keep them on! You’ll want to be sure that your nearest and dearest are accounted for, as well as the “timely” acquaintances - people like your current boss, some of your co-workers, i.e. those who see you on the reg, know about your wedding in great detail, and might even have a say in your paycheck. It’s a respect thing.
Once you’ve talked things over with your future spouse, and feel comfortable and confident about the squad of people you’ll be inviting to your wedding, then it’s time for spreadsheet building. I STILL come back to my own wedding guest list+address sheets, and this is 5 years later - I send my son’s birthday thank you cards out using these addresses, I remember what guests gave us for gifts (because I took copious notes and memos), a strong ledger like this can be game-changing for the future, really! So, when you get to this step, make sure you involve us - we’ve got a guest list wizard that will literally feel like magic ✨✨✨.
Before we jump into it, though, you’ll want to register with us - as a bride - and get your planning tools in place first. Haven’t done it yet? Just this way 👉 BEST PLANNING TOOLS EVER
Alrighty, sooo guest list. Here’s how we do it:
You’ll create an event. Chances are it’ll be your wedding - because that’s how we intro you to our planning loop, getting those deets on the date, the place, etc. But, you can add any number of pre or post wedding events (engagement party, bridal shower, bachelorette, rehearsal dinner, post-wedding brunch, etc.) and still keep track of them all respectively.
Add your guests. You can enter guest names manually or upload a CSV spreadsheet file. The cool thing about this step is that you can add certain layers to each guest’s listing (what their relationship is to you or your soon-to-be spouse, whether they’re an adult or child, whether they get a plus one or not, or even if they’ll be attending one or more of your events).
Collect info. One of the hardest parts of planning, easily, is when you have to reach out to friends, family, peers, colleagues, to get contact info. You’ll need addresses to send out your save the dates, you’ll need detailed contact info (names, titles, etc.) for your stationer to prep your wedding invitations, it’s just a big undertaking. That’s why we’ll be helping you out. As soon as you can, send out address requests to your guests. We’ve already got a template reserved for you, something as simple as “Lev and I (your names) are collecting addresses for our wedding, we’d love to send you an invite. Please send us your contact info so that we can send you something special.” All you’ll need to do is upload guests’ email addresses, approve the wording, and press send.
Track RSVPs. Okay, so you’ll probably be sending paper invites out and including response cards - it’s ‘tradition,’ right? But after the first few RSVP cards come back in the mail (and you get all excited, because it’s mail, it’s addressed to you, and it means people are coming to your party), it gets monotonous, not to mention, messy if you don’t have a box, binder, or folder to keep everything organized. Our RSVP tracker makes it SUPER easy for guests to say ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ to your event, and all it takes is you turning on the RSVP function on your wedding website. Anyone who knows your wedding website can hop over there and hit RSVP - without hassle - and even share their meal preferences (or song preference, you can customize a question to go along with your RSVP!) for your perusal.
When you’re about 4 weeks/one month out to your wedding, you’ll likely need to submit final head counts to your venue+caterer, so RSVPs are essential. Instead of texting your guests in a panic, or having your parents nightmare their invited friends, let us do the nudging. Just like you did with the address inquiry, send a new message to remind people to RSVP. Of course, we’ve already prepped a template for you, “Please remember to RSVP to the wedding so we know who’s coming!” The follow up won’t be for naught, we promise!
...Oh and when the wedding is over, you’ll be able to look back at your RSVP list, compare it to the gifts that you received, and be able to write out your thank you cards without hesitation. Can’t use ‘sorry, I couldn’t find your address’ as an excuse. You’ve obviously got the most current lists around (thank you Wedding Chicks 🙏), so just gotta do it! Don’t worry, we’ll probably even have something to help with that torture eventually, too! Stay tuned….