Wedding guest count calculator

From a list of names to a number

A guest list is a list of names. An attendance estimate is a number you can hand to a venue, and the two are never the same. Start from the number of invitations you will actually send, multiply by the average number of adults on each one, then apply an acceptance rate — the share of invited adults you expect to come. The calculator above does that arithmetic and keeps children in their own line, because caterers price them separately and seat them differently.

Households for invitations, people for catering

One envelope, one link, one reply form can cover a couple, a family of five or a single guest, so the number of invitations you send is almost never the number of chairs you need. Build the list as households while you are still deciding who is invited, then convert it to people — that is what the average-adults-per-invitation field is for — before you talk to anyone quoting you a price per head.

Choosing an acceptance rate

Most guests within driving distance

The usual planning range is roughly 75–85% of invited adults accepting, and many couples simply start at 80% until the first replies suggest otherwise. The acceptance field above is pre-filled at 82%, so move it to whichever figure you trust.

A destination wedding

Sits well below that. Couples planning one are normally advised to assume closer to half, and to ask the people whose presence matters most before the invitations go out.

These are conventions, not measurements. Your own list will behave according to who is on it: a list full of local family behaves nothing like one built of university friends now scattered across three countries.

When the venue cap and the list disagree

Resolve it on the list, not on the estimate. Talking yourself into a higher acceptance rate to make the numbers fit is how couples end up with more confirmed guests than seats. Split the list into a first and a second tier instead: send the first tier, wait for the early declines, then release the second tier far enough ahead of the RSVP deadline that the later invitations still arrive in good time. If the gap is large, the honest fix is a different room or a shorter list.

Replace the estimate with replies

Treat the result as a planning range, not a promise. The moment named replies start arriving, the live RSVP count replaces the forecast — one real yes from a real guest outranks any percentage — so collect the replies somewhere they stay counted rather than across a group chat and three phone calls. Keep a single running total so the caterer, the venue and the seating plan are all reading the same number. The four numbers you type are calculated in your browser and never leave the device — nothing you enter here is stored, sent or saved.