Wedding Budget Guest List Planner, Excel Google Sheets Template (Digital Download)

WEDDING BUDGET AND GUEST LIST PLANNER - Excel and Google Sheets, 8 linked tabs, with a whole worked wedding already inside.

Most wedding spreadsheets are a list of costs. This one answers the question the list never answers: what does one more guest actually cost?

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THE TAB THAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT: PER HEAD
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Most of a wedding does not move when the guest list does. The photographer, the band, the dress, the rings and the venue cost the same for sixty people as for a hundred.

A handful of things multiply - the meal, the evening food, the drinks package, the favour, the stationery, the place setting, the slice of cake, the extra chair. The Per Head tab adds up only those and gives you one number.

In the worked example inside the file that number is $106. Ten fewer guests would save $1,060. Ten more would cost the same in the other direction.

Once you both have that number, the guest list conversation stops being about who matters and becomes arithmetic, which is a very much easier conversation to have.

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WHAT IS IN THE FILE
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1. START HERE - what each tab does, the colour rules, and the honest limits, written out.

2. SETUP - four cells: the date, how many you are planning for, what you can spend, and a contingency. Underneath, calculated: estimated, quoted, paid, still to pay, and what is left of your budget.

3. BUDGET - 50 lines. Your estimate, the real quote, what you have paid, what is still to pay, and the gap between your guess and the quote. 18 lines are already filled in.

4. BY CATEGORY - nothing typed. The same money grouped into 18 categories, each one's share worked out, and the biggest single category named for you.

5. PAYMENTS - 100 payments sorted by the date the money has to be there. Anything due within 30 days turns amber, anything past its date turns red. Two totals: everything still to pay, and everything due this month.

6. GUEST LIST - 300 rows: name, side, group, day or evening, reply, meal, dietary and access needs, table. Nine counts keep themselves - invited, said yes, said no, still to reply, evening only, vegetarian, vegan, children, and anyone with a dietary or access need.

7. PER HEAD - the costs that multiply, added into one number, plus what ten fewer or ten more guests would do.

8. COUNTDOWN - 60 lines of what to do and roughly when, 34 already written, from agreeing what you can spend twelve months out to the thank you cards afterwards.

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THE EXAMPLE IS ALREADY IN IT
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18 budget lines, 13 payments, 34 guests, 34 to-do items. Nothing is blank, so you can see how every column behaves before you touch it.

It is deliberately $3,880 over budget. That is what an honest wedding budget looks like nine months out, and it is easier to learn a file that has a problem in it than one that pretends everything is fine.

Read it, then type over it.

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WHO IT IS FOR
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- Couples paying for most of it themselves
- Anyone with a budget that actually has to hold
- Parents keeping track of what they promised
- Elopements and small weddings - use the rows you need, the rest stay blank
- Both of you looking at one file instead of two

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TWO COPIES IN THE DOWNLOAD
One workbook has the worked example filled in, so you can see what every column expects before you touch anything. The second is the same file completely blank — same tabs, same formulas, same charts — ready for your own numbers from the first row. Start on whichever suits you.


HONEST LIMITS - PLEASE READ BEFORE BUYING
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- It is a planner, not a payment system. Nothing connects to a bank and nothing is sent.
- No RSVP website. Guests do not type into it; you type their replies in.
- Seating is a table number, not a drawn plan.
- Currency and tax are whatever you type. No VAT handling, and nothing here is tax advice.
- It cannot stop a venue changing its prices. When one changes, you change it here.
- Capacity: 300 guests, 50 budget lines, 100 payments, 60 to-do lines.

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WHAT YOU GET
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- Wedding_Budget_Guest_Planner.xlsx
- A written Start Here guide (PDF) that explains the order to do things in and what to do when a number looks wrong

Instant download. Nothing arrives in the post.

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WORKS WITH
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- Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer, Windows or Mac
- Google Sheets - upload the file and open it with Sheets. Share it and you can both work on it at once.
- LibreOffice, which is free

No macros, so there is nothing to enable. Any country, any currency - you type all of it.

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ABOUT ACCESS
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I never ask for access to anything. No password, no manager invite, no app permissions. You buy the file, you download it, that is the whole transaction.

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TERMS
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For your own wedding, and for your family's. Please do not resell or redistribute the file.

Because it is a digital download, it cannot be returned - which is exactly why the honest limits are written above rather than hidden. If something in the file does not work, message me and I will fix it.

Questions before you buy are welcome.