If you are planning an event, you need to make sure that you finalize your guest list as soon as possible. It does not matter whether you are planning a wedding; you need to ensure that you have the guest list for the event down, as it allows you to plan so much more. Without knowing who is going to be coming to your event, you can’t progress planning in many other areas, especially if you’re a nonprofit event planner or if you’re coordinating a large-scale corporate function.

Get the Invitations Sent Out

Once you have decided who is going to be on your guestlist, you need to get your invitations sent out as quickly as you possibly can. Make sure that there is a clear RSVP date on the invitations so your guests know when they have to reply by. You also need to make sure that you are sending out any invitations with enough time for your guests to work out whether or not they actually will be able to attend the event.

For this reason, online invitations can be a great idea. They will be sent out in an instant, so you can be certain that they will arrive in inboxes much faster than if they were to go out by mail. Greenvelope’s online invitations can be used across a variety of events, and can be just as beautiful as printed ones. On top of this, they can also collect useful information that you will need to know for the final event. Having all of this information available in a database online can be far more convenient than if you were to have to input all of it yourself from paper forms sent with printed invitations.

Venue Capacity

When you book a venue for an event, you will have a certain capacity that you need to stick to. Smaller venues might only be for 40 people, larger ones could be for 200 or even more. It can be surprising how quickly your guestlist can fill up with people who just have to be there.

If your venue has a strict capacity, you might have to be ruthless with who you invite. The sooner that you are able to confirm the guestlist, the sooner you will be able to pass these details across to the venue so they can start making their own preparations for your day.

Dietary Requirements

If you will be serving food at your event, you need to make sure that your guestlist is finalised as soon as possible so you know what dietary requirements your guests might have. These can range from a choice of diet that they might follow such as veganism all the way to allergies that require gluten or nut-free meals.

You need to make sure that you can pass on as accurate a list of requirements to your caterers as you can manage. This could affect your menu quite significantly, and they could have to ensure that they carefully prepare your guests’ food to avoid cross-contamination. The sooner that you can give them this information, the sooner they can begin to come with dishes that will suit your event.

Seating Arrangements

Finally, you need to finalise your guestlist as soon as possible as it will allow you to being to work on the seating arrangements for the big day. This can be a real headache, so the sooner you can get everything finalised the better. A seating plan is never as simple as it initially seems. You will find yourself having to make constant adjustments to it, so the sooner you can start on it the closer you will get to the perfect arrangement!

There is always the chance that you could invite two people who don’t usually get on to your event. It just wouldn’t be fair to leave out either of them, and you can rely on them to be civil at the actual event. However, asking them to sit at the same table could be asking for trouble. It might be better to try to keep them apart, and the best way that you are going to do so will always be with the seating plan.

Planning a big event will take a lot of effort on your part, and so you need to make sure that you are always prepared to take on the challenges that it might throw to you. Part of this will be managing and finalising the guestlist for the event. Though you might be tempted to focus on some of the more fun parts of event planning, there are some important factors that you need to sort out first. One of these will always be your guestlist, so make sure that it is finalised as soon as possible.