Everyone who eats. Including the five people not on your guest list.
Your photographer is at the reception for nine hours, and somewhere in their contract is a line saying you feed them. So is the videographer’s, the DJ’s, and the planner’s. None of them are on your guest list — which is exactly why they are the plates that get left out of the count.
✓ Counts come off your guest list ✓ No unlock needed ✓ Two printable views
The plates nobody counted
A wedding feeds three to eight people its guest list has never heard of. Their meals are agreed months earlier, in contracts, and then live nowhere near the spreadsheet everyone is actually working from.
The other half of the problem is quieter. Most tools count the guests you have already seated — so a couple who prints their numbers before the seating puzzle is finished sends a total that is short by however many people are still sitting in the unseated pile.
Neither of those is a rounding error. Both of them end the same way: someone at your wedding has no dinner.
| Meal | Guests | Vendors | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken | 31 | — | 31 |
| Fish | 19 | — | 19 |
| Vegetarian | 9 | 1 | 10 |
| Vendor meal | — | 4 | 4 |
| No meal choice recorded | 3 | — | 3 |
| Total | 62 | 5 | 67 |
Three things, then print it
The numbers are read from the guest list you already keep. The only thing you type here is the handful of people that list was never going to know about.
The counts build themselves
Every guest on your list is counted, seated or not. Meal choices come from your sheet, and the totals move the moment the sheet does.
Add the people you feed
Name, role, meal. Your photographer, the second shooter, the DJ, the planner — whoever your contracts cover. Edit a row any time; it saves as you go.
Print the one they asked for
A summary for the caterer who wants numbers, or a detailed sheet for whoever is actually cooking. Both print, or save as a PDF.
The same numbers, told to two different people
A caterer emailing for a headcount and a kitchen plating 67 covers need very different pages. Printing one sheet and hoping it suits both is how a guest’s nut allergy ends up in a vendor’s inbox.
| Meal | Guests | Vendors | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken | 31 | — | 31 |
| Vegetarian | 9 | 1 | 10 |
| Total | 62 | 5 | 67 |
The summary names no one
It is the catering plan as you see it on screen: the totals, the meal breakdown, and the vendor list. It says how many people carry a dietary restriction without saying who they are or what it is.
That is the page you forward when a vendor asks for numbers. You should not have to read it twice to check whose medical information you just attached to an email.
The detailed sheet is for the kitchen
Everything above, plus each flagged guest by name with their restriction and their table, and every table’s guests with what each of them is eating. It is the page that gets carried around a service kitchen, so it is laid out to be read at arm’s length and photocopied in black and white.
The things that quietly go wrong
Unseated guests still eat
Whether someone has been dragged onto a table is a fact about how far you got with the seating puzzle, not about whether they want dinner. Every count here covers the whole list.
A vendor meal is its own line
Caterers price a vendor plate separately, and lower. So it is a choice of its own rather than a guest entrée — you are never forced to write your photographer down as having the chicken and be billed for one.
Three spellings of chicken is one number
Chicken, chicken and CHICKEN came from three people typing into the same column. They count as one meal, labelled with whichever spelling you used most.
Nobody has to finish seating first
Caterers want a number weeks before you want to be finished. Print the plan whenever they ask; it is built from the list, not from how much of the chart you have done.
It lives in your spreadsheet
Vendors save to a Vendors tab beside Guests and Tables, so you can paste a list in, sort it, or hand the whole sheet to your planner. Weddings with no vendors never get the tab at all.
Vendors never touch your seating chart
They are counted for the kitchen and nowhere else. No phantom guest appears in your unseated list, your shot list or Who’s Who because you told the caterer about your DJ.
Two things worth knowing
An empty allergy column looks exactly like no allergies
Dietary flags are read from your guest sheet. If nobody has filled that column in, this page will tell you that no one is flagged — which is true of the spreadsheet and may not be true of the room. The sheet says so out loud rather than printing a confident zero, but it is still worth confirming before anyone cooks.
Vendors have no allergy field, on purpose
It would be someone else’s medical information, held by a couple who has no reason to have it and passed to a caterer who can ask the vendor directly. Their meal choice is recorded; their health is not.
It is free, and it does not need the seating chart finished
The catering plan, vendor meals and both printed views are in the free plan. Unlocking a wedding — a one-time $14 — lifts the five-table limit on your seating chart and adds the Who’s Who face sheet for your photographer. See pricing →
Answered
Do you have to feed your wedding vendors?
What is a vendor meal at a wedding?
How many meals should I tell my caterer to prepare?
Is the catering plan free?
Read more
The catering plan reads the same guest list everything else does.
- The guest list templateWhich columns the meal counts and dietary flags are read from.
- How many tables do I need?The other number a venue asks for before you feel ready to give one.
- Reception layout ideasWhere the kitchen doors are matters more than couples expect.
- How to make a seating chartStart here if the list exists but the room does not yet.
It starts with your guest list
Build the list once. The seating chart, the catering plan, the shot list and Who’s Who all read from it.
Free to start. The catering plan is in the free plan.