The Guest Handbook
A guest list is not
a list of names.
It is a list of households that happens to contain names. Getting that distinction right early fixes four separate problems later — how many invitations to order, how to address them, how to count replies, and how to seat people.
How should I organise a wedding guest list?
Build it as households, not individuals. One household is everyone who shares an address and will receive one invitation together. Record the household's address once, then the people inside it with their own names, ages and dietary needs. Invitations are counted per household; catering and seating are counted per person.
01
Why the distinction matters.
Almost every guest-list mistake traces back to a spreadsheet with one row per person. You order invitations by counting rows and buy far too many. You address them by guessing which rows live together. Replies arrive per person for some households and per family for others, so the total never quite reconciles. And at seating time you have to reconstruct who belongs with whom from surnames.
A household-shaped list makes each of those a lookup rather than a judgement call. It costs nothing extra to set up if you do it at the beginning, and it is genuinely painful to retrofit at the end — which is when most people discover they need it.
02
What belongs at which level.
The rule: anything that is true of the address goes on the household; anything true of a person goes on the person.
| On the household | On each person |
|---|---|
| Postal address | Full name, as it should appear in writing |
| How they are addressed together | Whether they are a child, and their age |
| Which invitation they receive | Dietary requirements and allergies |
| Side or group (family, work, university) | Whether they have a plus-one |
| Email and phone for replies | Language they should be written to in |
| One reply, or one per person | Table assignment |
03
Building one from scratch.
List households first, not people
Write down "the Okonkwos", "Marion", "Sam and Priya + 2". Do not start with names. You will be surprised how much faster the list comes together, because this is how you actually think about the people in your life.
Expand each household into people
Now fill in who is inside each one, with correct spellings and any children's ages. Ages matter more than they look — they decide children's meals, whether a seat is needed, and whether a name goes on the invitation.
Decide the reply unit per household
Most households reply once, together. Some — adult siblings sharing a flat, grown children at a parent's address — need to reply individually. Mark which is which now; it is the detail that makes headcounts drift later.
Mark plus-ones explicitly, before addressing
A plus-one is a decision, not an assumption, and it must be made before you address anything. See the plus-ones guidance for how to decide and how to communicate it.
Only now count invitations
Invitations equal households, plus a handful of spares — not people. This is where the household list pays for itself immediately, and it is usually a much smaller number than people expect.
The commonest structural mistake: treating a couple at one address as two households because they have different surnames. They receive one invitation, so they are one household. Conversely, two adult friends sharing a flat are usually two households receiving two invitations, even though the address is identical. The test is not the address — it is how many invitations go through that door.
04
Common questions
Do children get their own invitation?
How do I handle a guest bringing an unnamed plus-one?
What about guests I am inviting to some events but not others?
Is a spreadsheet good enough?
Organise your list into households, free.
Paste or upload the names you have. The organiser groups them into households, flags likely duplicates and shows you what is missing before you order anything. No account, no email required.
Open the guest list organiser How many invitations do I need?