Adding guests in batches

The guest list does not exist yet. What exists are four lists that disagree: a notebook, WhatsApp messages from your partner’s side, a spreadsheet somebody started in March, and a voice note you have not properly listened to. The work is not the typing. The work is deciding which version is the list, then entering the result in batches rather than one form at a time. One number to settle first: a free account holds 150 guests in total, so a two hundred name list needs a paid plan, and neither paid plan caps the count.

Where the list actually comes from

Ask five people for the guest list and you get five answers, none of them complete. Your mother has names in a notebook, half of them written as “Ranjith uncle” rather than anything that would match a phone contact. The other side sent theirs as messages over three weeks, each adding people and none repeating what came before.

None of them is wrong. They are partial lists that overlap where nobody has checked: the cousin claimed by both sides appears twice, spelled two ways, and the couple your aunt counts as one entry is two seats at dinner. Type all four straight in and the list comes out longer than the wedding, with one uncle still missing.

Merge first, type second

Do the merge in one place before anyone types anything. It is the dull half, and the half that saves the evening.

• One person owns each side’s list, and one of you owns the merged version. Two editors on one list is how duplicates come back.
• Every name needs something that identifies it and a number, or a note saying who is chasing one. “Ranjith uncle” can stay on the row as long as the row also carries a surname. A name without a number is not on the guest list yet. It is on a to-do list.
• Agree a cut-off date for additions with each family, out loud. Lists that stay open until the week before are why people get invited twice.

One row per household, or one per person

Decide this before the first row goes in. Everything downstream reads it: how the invitation is addressed, the number the caterer gets, and how replies come back.

A household row is one entry for “Anoma and Sunil” with a head count of two, and one link between them. Individual rows are two entries, two links, two separate replies. Households keep the list short and match how invitations have always been addressed; individual rows tell you exactly who is coming. In practice: households for family and couples, individual rows for the work and university groups where people come alone.

The head count is the field people set carelessly and regret. Set it while you type the row, while you still remember why it is four. An invitation you have switched over to per-event RSVP, with more than one ceremony on it, splits that field into a number for each ceremony instead: the office block you counted as six for the reception might be down as two for the morning. Left off, as it starts, the single number stands for the whole day.

Typing a batch instead of a guest at a time

Open form, type, save, wait, open form again. That shape is what makes a long list feel endless. Batch entry is a screen of rows instead: a name, a WhatsApp number, a head count, a group and a side, then on to the next row without leaving the page, and one save for the batch.

It suits the way a merged list is arranged anyway. Groups arrive in blocks - the office together, one side’s family as a notebook page. Type a block in one sitting, setting each row’s group and side as you go, and the tagging you will want later, when you need one slice of the list, is done by the time you save.

A number that could not be real for its country stops the save and names the guest it belongs to, so you fix one line instead of hunting for it. If a save is refused, the rows that went through clear and the failures stay on screen, so nothing you typed is lost. A dropped connection mid-save is the one thing it cannot settle for you: it says so and tells you to check the list before retrying, because a row may have been written even though the answer never came back.

A wrong number is an invitation that silently never arrives

This failure costs people guests and gives no warning. A printed invitation sent to the wrong address comes back to you. A message to a number that does not exist simply sits there, and you find out the week of the wedding, when somebody asks why they were never invited.

Handwritten numbers lose a digit. Numbers copied from an old contact card keep a prefix that changed years ago. Numbers dictated in a voice note arrive with no country code, which matters the moment a guest is abroad.

So every number you enter is checked against the real numbering rules for its country: not “does this look like digits” but whether that particular number could exist there. A digit too many gets caught, as does a leading zero that should not survive the international form. What it cannot tell you is whether the number belongs to the person you think it does. Nothing can. It clears out the numbers that were never going to ring at all.

For the rest, a cheap habit: send an ordinary message to any number you copied rather than received. If it does not deliver, you have found the problem weeks early.

When entering the list is the wrong plan

If you already keep a clean spreadsheet with names, numbers and groups in it, entering it again is work you have done once. With no import, that second pass is a genuine cost, and on a long list it is an evening. The list is not trapped once it is in - it comes back out as a CSV - but nothing gets it in except typing.

And if a real part of your list has no number you can reach - the grandparents without a smartphone, the neighbours you only see in person - the list is not the problem, the delivery is. They need a card or a phone call whatever everyone else gets. Keep them on the list so the head count is right, and do not read their silence as a refusal.

Related: Guest list manager · Pricing