Every guest once.
The right version, received.

The total can be right while the plan is wrong

Imagine twenty intended seated guests, labelled G01 through G20 in this example. These are invented worksheet identifiers, not real guests or fields we claim an app exports. There are two tables of ten.

Scroll the table sideways on a narrow screen, or print this page using your browser.

G10 appears twice; G11 is missing. Both tables still contain ten entries. Correcting the second G10 to G11 resolves this particular error.

Uniqueness alone is not enough either. Replace intended guest G20 with an uninvited G21 and you still have twenty unique entries. The check is: every intended seated guest appears exactly once, and nobody else appears by mistake.

Use a stable reference in your private working list if you need to distinguish people with the same name. Two people called Alex Morgan are not automatically a duplicate. A household, a plus-one placeholder and a named individual are also not interchangeable. Confirm who each entry means before merging or deleting it.

1. Start from the current list of people actually expected to be seated, not every original invitation.
2. Match each intended person to one table assignment.
3. Find repeated assignments, unassigned people and unexpected entries separately.
4. Recount each table against its agreed capacity, including any seating or highchair arrangements confirmed with the venue.
5. Recheck fixed assignments and together/apart preferences after the final changes.

This is a manual review method. It does not imply that a particular app automatically checks all these conditions or generates the example identifiers.

Get the format and deadline from your coordinator

A beautiful PDF is not necessarily the document your venue accepts. Confirm their current template or portal, table names and capacities, seating order, deadline and the person who should receive the final version.

For example, Wootton Park’s table-plan FAQ asks for its Google Sheet template at least fourteen days before the event. Amber Springs’ final-details guide instead specifies a Moposa table plan one week before, with guaranteed guest numbers confirmed separately seventy-two hours before. These are those venues’ published requirements, not a universal wedding deadline. Reconfirm your own arrangements.

Keep these items distinct:

• Seating list: who sits at which table, and any agreed place order.
• Catering counts: the venue’s categories for adults, children, infants, suppliers and evening-only guests. They may not equal a single seating total.
• Meal and service information: the specific details the coordinator asks you to provide through their chosen secure channel. Do not infer an allergy from a preference, or treat a note in a planning app as confirmation from catering staff.
• Room layout: the venue-approved position of tables and access routes. A guest-to-table list is not a scale floor plan or safety assessment.

Only share personal, dietary or accessibility details with the people who need them, in the format they request. Do not publish the private guest list or use real guest information in a public sample.

Send one version and ask for acknowledgement

Give the file a clear event reference, version and date. Before sending, open the exported file itself: check guest names, table labels, page breaks and that it reflects the most recent changes, rather than trusting an older preview.

Ask the coordinator to confirm receipt and the accepted version. A sent email or a locally saved export does not prove the venue has adopted it. For a late change, name the person and the specific old and new assignment, update the master list, and agree which replacement file supersedes the earlier one.

Keep an unchanged copy of the version the venue accepted. Do not have several people independently sending different “final” lists without a shared handoff agreement.

A copyable final check

Use this on paper or in your own private spreadsheet. No account, email or app download is required.

Event reference / date:
Working list version / last updated:
Coordinator / agreed recipient:
Required format or portal:
Table-plan deadline:
Separate catering-count deadline:

Intended seated people:
Total assignments / unique person references:
Missing intended people:
Repeated assignments:
Unexpected people / unresolved plus-ones:
Namesakes checked as separate people:
Per-table capacity and agreed seating order checked:
Fixed assignments / together-apart preferences checked:

Venue-required meal/service details checked separately:
Export OPENED and checked, not just generated:
Filename / version sent / time sent:
Receipt confirmed by / time:
Accepted version / unresolved questions:
Late changes and superseded version: