Next to establishing the event budget, establishing the guest list for a wedding or event before doing anything else is critical. It’s nearly impossible to select a venue, design a floorplan, secure vendors, and plan the overall vision of an event when you don’t have an accurate guest count in place. When wondering how to make a wedding guest list, start by asking yourselves these three questions:
What is our overall wedding budget?
Do we want a small or large wedding?
Who are “must-haves” to include on guest list?
Allseated’s wedding guest list manager makes it easy to store and manage your wedding guest list while also providing many additional features to keep you organized and on task. Below we go into detail with ten reasons to use Allseated to manage your event guest list.
1 - Store and Organize Guest List
Wedding couples often wonder how to organize a wedding guest list. Allseated’s wedding guest list provides you with a place to organize and store mailing addresses and information for each guest. Since Allseated is a collaborative planning tool, invite your entourage into your Allseated account to assist you with adding mailing addresses and even, later on, with arranging your seating.
Allseated’s guest list tool increases organization and operational efficiency. The guest list is an added value to clients, allowing users to do the following:
- Keep an accurate count and list of all invited guests in one place.
- List mailing information
- Easily update and edit your guest list with the click of a button
- Group guests into categories (such as friends, family, and colleagues) for even more organization
- Keep notes
- Track RSVP’s
- Assign meal preferences for each guest, preventing the chance of error.
- Specify guests for multiple events such as wedding-related events (bridal showers, rehearsal dinners, and day-after wedding brunches).
- Arrange seating charts directly from the guest list
- Collaborate with anyone involved on the event
- Generate reports
Let’s take a closer look at the features available to you when managing your event guest list in Allseated.
2 - Keep Notes and List Meal Types
Having a notes section within a wedding guest list is really important. With Allseated’s wedding guest list tool, there’s plenty of room to keep notes for each guest. When determining what notes to keep on each guest, consider things like meal preferences, listing food allergies, and anything else you need to remember can be stored in the notes section.
3 - Create Guest List Categories
With a massive guest list for a wedding, you may want to group guests in categories.
Allseated’s wedding guest list planner features the ability to group guests into categories. Some of the category ideas are friends, family, and colleagues. You also have the option to specify and filter guests for multiple events such as bridal showers, rehearsal dinners and day-after wedding brunches. This extra level of organization really makes your planning process extra smooth.
With guests already broken down into groups, it can be even easier to decide where to seat guests in the floorplan once you move on to the seating charts for all wedding-related events and the wedding reception.
4 - Collaborate With Others
Collaboration is key when planning an event. Allseated provides the opportunity for wedding guest list help with tools to collaborate with anyone involved on the event. Invite vendor teams, friends, and relatives into the event in Allseated so that they can help enter the guest names and addresses necessary to complete the guest list. Maybe you will even have them help you with the seating arrangements!
5. Manage RSVP’s
As a wedding RSVP tracker, easily keep track of your RSVP’s within the guest list as you receive them to stay super organized and on top of who will be able to attend the wedding. This is extra important since you need an accurate list in order to create your seating chart!
6 - Create Wedding Floorplan
With Allseated’s wedding floorplan design tools, it’s easy to design the wedding layout to-scale. Having the event guest list loaded in Allseated keeps details organized and makes it much more efficient when trying to understand the best layout for the reception.
Using Allseated to design a floorplan offers you many features and tools including the ability to:
- Select your tables, chairs, objects, and furniture
- Customize spacing
- Join tables and/or knock off chairs
- Include spacing for dance floors and entertainment areas
- Mark exits within the layout
- List any planning details and/or notes directly within the floorplan
- Save favorite objects and templates for future layouts
- Create custom groups and save to favorites
- Upload files (including JPG, PNG, PDF) to floorplan
Depending upon the size of your guest list and venue, there are many reception layout styles. If you aren’t sure of the layout you envision for the wedding floorplan, it’s easy to play around with various combinations of tables using Allseated. You may also wish to ask your venue contact if they have an idea in mind for your wedding reception layout. Your venue contact can design the layout in Allseated, enhancing visualization and bringing your wedding to life during the planning process.
7 - Easily Arrange Seating
Using the wedding RSVP list and once the floorplan layout is created, it’s easy (and fun!) to arrange the event seating chart. The seating tab within your event provides you with access to your floorplans and guest list. Using the seat chart wedding tool, seat guests within the floorplan layout by selecting guests from the guest list and placing them at the desired tables. It’s simple and efficient to select a guest, then click on a specific table in the floorplan, to easily seat the guest. When creating your event or wedding table seating chart, you may wish to seat guests at specific seats at specific tables. Allseated offers you the option to do this by first placing them at a table, clicking that table, and assigning the guest to their specific seat.
To learn more about the features that are available to you when designing an event seating chart in Allseated such as 3D tabletop designer tools, how to build and manage timelines, and generating useful reports for the event, click here.
8 - View Floorplan and Seating Chart in 2D and 3D
A major benefit to an event planning business is using Allseated’sseating chart creator tools for the ability to view the seating layout in 2D and 3D.
At any time during the seating chart design process, it’s easy to switch from 2D viewing to 3D viewing to take a virtual walkthrough of the layout. The 3D viewing options include Bird’s Eye viewing which allows you to see your event seating chart in 3D from an above view. It’s also possible to virtually walk through the event layout in 3D via 1st Person View as if you were taking a virtual walkthrough of your event floorplan layout. The many varieties of 3D seating chart viewing options help to ensure that you’re 100% satisfied with the event or wedding seating chart during the design process. This makes the day of the event seamless, accurate, and in line with your event vision.
9 - Generate Reports In Realtime
Generating reports from your wedding guest list can be useful for many reasons! By sorting through the filtering options, you can easily generate reports from your guest list for calligraphy items such as invitation orders, place cards and favors. Create another report for your venue/and or caterer with guest count information as well as meal type requests and any other important information needed from your notes section.
10. Keep Track of Gifts Received
As you receive gifts both before and after your special day, easily keep accurate notes on who gave what so that you can look back at your list when it’s time to send thank you cards. Your Allseated guest list also comes in handy at thank you card time when you need those mailing addresses again!
Allseated’s wedding floorplan platform includes the best way to organize a wedding guest list. Get started here.
The wedding guest list should be one of the first steps of the wedding planning process. The wedding guest list and budget should be determined before moving further with planning.
It’s important to have the guest list conversation early on in planning. Decide what the wedding budget is, if you want a small or large wedding, and who is on the “must invite” list. From there, it should be easier to determine the rest of the wedding guest list.
Using Allseated, it’s easy to store and manage your wedding guest list. When you use Allseated for your guest list, you can then design the floorplan and seating chart, easily seating guests at the tables.
Yes, it’s quick and easy to generate reports regarding the details of your event, including a guest list report.
Yes, when designing a floorplan in Allseated, you can collaborate with others and give them access to the guest list too, if desired.
The Allseated guest list allows you to enter guest information, mailing addresses, meal types, notes, and more.
Using Allseated’s guest list tool, it’s easy to manage your wedding guest list and track RSVP’s too.
