Managing guests
Add guests by hand or import a CSV/XLSX, group households, manage plus-ones, let guests share invites, run bulk actions, and export your list.
Add guests by hand or import a CSV/XLSX, group households, manage plus-ones, let guests share invites, run bulk actions, and export your list.
Your guest list is the heart of your event. Every person who might attend — whether they've RSVP'd yet or not — lives here. You'll manage it from the Guest List page in your event dashboard.
To get there, open your event in the dashboard and go to Guests > Guest List.
Adding a guest by hand takes just a few seconds. It's the quickest way to invite a single person or top up a list you've already imported.
In your event dashboard, go to Guests > Guest List.
Select Add Guest in the top-right corner.
Add the guest's name, and optionally an email address and/or phone number. Contact details aren't required to add someone, but you'll need them to send an invitation — and they're how a guest who opens your event's address is matched to their place on your list (see How guests get in).
When you're adding a lot of people at once, the import is much faster — see below.
For events with dozens or hundreds of guests, importing from a spreadsheet beats typing names one by one. Rendezvous accepts CSV and Excel (XLSX) files up to 10 MB, with up to 5,000 guests per import. You can also paste rows straight from a spreadsheet. For older .xls files, save a copy as XLSX or CSV first. Include a header row so you can match each column to the right guest detail.
The import walks you through a few quick steps and never writes anything until you confirm:
On the Guest List page, click Import. Drag a file onto the drop zone — "Drop your guest list here" — or click to browse for a CSV or Excel file. Prefer to paste? Choose Paste from a spreadsheet instead and drop in your copied rows.
You'll see your data with each column ready to map to a guest field: Name (the only required one), Email, Phone, Party / household (groups people together), and Plus-ones (their plus-ones' names, separated by commas). Anything you don't need, leave unmapped. When your headers match the expected names, Rendezvous maps them for you automatically.
Before anything is created, you get a preview: how many guests will be added, how many plus-ones and parties come with them, and — flagged in red — any rows that "need a look." Each problem row spells out what's wrong (a missing name, a malformed email, a duplicate already on your event). You can fix your file and re-upload, or import just the valid rows and leave the problem ones behind.
Happy with the preview? Confirm, and your guests — with their parties and plus-ones — are added in one go.
Every guest has a card that gives you the full picture at a glance. Click any row on the Guest List to open it. You'll see:
From a guest's card or row menu you can edit their details, set a custom plus-one limit, or remove them. On a plan with QR check-in, the card also has an Arrival section, and the row menu leads with Mark as arrived (or Undo arrival), for a guest you let in at the door without scanning a pass. An arrived guest's row reads Arrived · 7:42 PM.
You don't have to open a card to see what someone's eating. When you collect a meal or dietary answer at RSVP, it shows right on the guest row as a small chip — "Meal · Fish", a dietary note, and so on — with the seating-critical answers (meal, dietary) leading. If a guest has answered several questions, the first few show inline and the rest fold into a "+N" badge you can hover. It's the fastest way to plan a table or brief a caterer while you scan the list.
Each guest row shows small chips next to their status so you can see, at a glance, how you've reached them:
These stick around after you reload, so you always know who still needs a nudge.
On a private event, a guest on your list can get in two ways. Both are equally good, and both land them in the same place — their own spot on your list, ready to RSVP. Nobody needs a password.
yourname.rendez.us). The guest opens the page and types the email address or phone number you have for them. We send a one-time code — by email, or by text for a phone number — and once they enter it, we match them to their place on your list. It's the same result as the link.Email is the usual way in; a phone number works just as well. A guest who comes in with their phone number is asked to add their email at the end (one more quick code), so they can sign back in later.
The second way only works if you've saved an email or a phone number for that guest, so add one for each guest where you can — both is even better. A guest you've saved with a name only can get in with their personal link alone. Save phone numbers with the country code (for example +44 7700 900123); if you type a local number, we add your country's code for you when the number is a real one in your country, and otherwise ask you to include the code. Numbers saved earlier without a country code are flagged on your guest list ("2 phone numbers need a country code") and in the guest's details: pick the country, check the number, and save — nothing changes until you do.
If a guest types an address you don't have for them, we tell them they're not on the list yet. They can try the other email or phone number you might have for them, or — if you've turned on Allow requests to join — ask you to let them in. Anyone who isn't on your list stays outside and never sees your private event. (Guests who ask to join are covered in Approving join requests.)
Every guest has a personal link — a one-tap, pre-verified link that drops them straight onto their RSVP with no code to type. It's the same link that rides along in their invite email. Open a guest's row menu (the three-dot ⋮ menu) to work with it:
Parties are for guests who belong together — couples, families, households, or a band of friends arriving as one. They're not tags or audience segments; they're a way to keep a household connected.
When guests share a party:
There are two ways to group guests, whichever feels faster:
A brand-new party starts out as Unnamed party until you name it.
Give a party a name so you can tell households apart at a glance — "The Garcia family", "College crew", "Table 4". Click the party's name (or the pencil icon next to it), type a name in the Name this party field, and press Enter. You can rename it any time.
Use Remove from group on the guest's row menu, or drag them back out into the ungrouped list. A guest dragged out of every party simply becomes solo again.
Plus-ones let a guest bring extra people. You control this in two places:
Your list shows how many plus-ones each guest may bring, like +0/2, and adds default beside it when that number comes from the event default rather than one you set. The guest's card says (event default) too, so you can always tell the two apart.
When a guest RSVPs and adds plus-ones, each plus-one appears as a linked entry under them on your list, and is counted in your headcount. A plus-one can carry their own RSVP status and their own answer to a per-person question — so a couple's two meal choices, for example, are captured in a single RSVP.
Sometimes you want word to spread on its own — a guest forwards the invite to a partner, a friend, or someone you didn't have on your list. You can allow that with the Guests can share invite link setting.
Find it under Settings > RSVP Behavior. When it's on, anyone who receives the link from a guest can RSVP, even if they're not on your guest list — and they're added to your list automatically when they do. When it's off (the default), only people you've added can respond.
Above your list, a one-line summary keeps a live count of where your RSVPs stand — something like "48 going · 6 maybe · 12 awaiting reply · 4 not invited yet." It's the first thing you read when you open the page.
Going counts the guests who hold a place. If your event has a waitlist or you approve replies yourself, a "yes" that doesn't have a place yet gets its own part of the line — 3 waitlist or 2 awaiting approval — so it's never mixed into your going number. See Understanding guest status for the full picture.
Each part of that line is a one-tap filter. Tap awaiting reply to see only the guests you've invited who haven't responded; tap not invited yet to find everyone who still needs an invitation. Tap the same part again to clear the filter and see everyone.
When anyone's still awaiting reply, a Nudge the N waiting button sits right beside the summary. Click it to send a reminder email to exactly those guests — you can add a short personal note before it goes — without hunting through the list to pick them out.
Use the sort control above the list to reorder it however helps most:
Need to act on many guests at once? Tick the checkboxes on the Guest List to select people, then use the action bar that appears at the bottom of the screen. It floats over the list rather than pushing it down, so the rows stay where they are while you tick, and on a phone it sits just above the tab bar, in reach however far down the list you have scrolled:
Bulk actions are a real time-saver on a large list — each one runs as a single operation, so even a few hundred guests update in one go.
You can download your guest list to a spreadsheet (CSV or Excel) anytime. Click Export on the Guest List page and tick the columns you want: name, email, phone, RSVP status, Seat, area and table, plus a column for each poll question.
The Seat column says whether a guest's answer holds a place: Seated, Waitlist, Awaiting approval or Request declined. It's what makes a catering or seating count right — a "Going" only holds a place when its Seat says Seated, so count the rows that say both. A guest who hasn't replied, or can't go, has nothing in Seat.
Plus-ones come out as rows of their own, right under the guest who brought them, with that guest's name in the Plus-one for column (it's empty for an invitee). Everything you export is filtered by the reply, so an export of Going lists the guests who hold a place and the plus-ones who said Going, not every plus-one of a guest who did. A plus-one has no seat of their own; their Seat is the seat of the guest they came with.
Each plan includes a maximum number of guests per event:
| Plan | Guest limit |
|---|---|
| Free | 25 guests |
| Standard | 100 guests |
| Premium | 200 guests |
| Professional | Contact sales |
Need more room on a paid plan? Add a guest extension pack — +100 guests for , and you can stack more than one. See Guest extensions for details.
You don't have to track this by hand. When your event gets within 5 guests of its limit, a banner appears at the top of your Guest List (and on the Join Requests page) showing exactly where you stand — for example, "You're 3 guests from your limit (97/100)." You'll also get a one-time heads-up email the first time you cross that line, so a near-full list never sneaks up on you.
When you hit the cap, the door closes on new additions until you make room. While you're at the limit:
To open things back up, you have three options: remove guests you no longer need, upgrade to a higher plan, or add a +100 guest pack for . The moment you make room, every add path and the Approve button come back to life. For the full breakdown, see Plan limits.