Importing Your Wedding Guest List
Bring your list in from a spreadsheet, Zola, The Knot, Joy, or any CSV: automatic column detection, households kept together, and dietary notes.
Getting your guest list into The Table Plan quickly and accurately is the foundation of everything else. The importer accepts any CSV file - whether you exported it from Zola, The Knot, Joy, or a spreadsheet you have been maintaining yourself - and reads the columns it needs for seating and exports. The Table Plan is a seating tool, not an RSVP tracker: bring the responses you already have, and it turns that list into a chart.
Exporting from your planning tool
Most planning tools let you export a guest list as a CSV. Here is where to find it in the most common ones.
Zola - go to your Guest List, click the three-dot menu in the top right, and choose "Export guest list."
The Knot - open your Guest List, click "Export" in the top right.
Joy - go to your Guest List, click "Download CSV" from the menu.
Your own spreadsheet - if your list lives in Google Sheets or Excel, export it as a CSV file (File → Download → CSV in Google Sheets; File → Save As → CSV in Excel). Any spreadsheet works as long as it has columns for at least first name.
Your export may include extra columns like RSVP status or meal choice - that is fine. The Table Plan simply reads the columns below and ignores the rest, so there is nothing to strip out first.
Which columns The Table Plan reads
The importer detects these columns from their headers automatically - exact capitalisation does not matter, and there is nothing to map by hand.
| Field | Recognised headers |
|---|---|
| First name (required) | First Name, First, First name, Given Name |
| Last name | Last Name, Last, Surname, Family Name |
| Household / group | Party, Household, Group, Family, Party ID |
Email, E-mail, Email Address | |
| Dietary notes | Dietary, Dietary Notes, Dietary Requirements, Dietary Needs |
| Tags | Tags, Tag |
Any column that does not match one of these - including RSVP status and meal choice - is ignored. Your CSV needs a first-name column to import; everything else is optional.
Keeping households together
The household column is the single most useful field to get right before you import. When guests share a household, The Table Plan's auto-seater keeps them together at the same table wherever possible - partners, parents with children, a group of friends travelling together.
In your CSV, give every member of the same household exactly the same value in the household column. Capitalisation does not matter but spelling does: Smith Family and Smith family will be treated as two different households. If you are exporting from Zola or The Knot, this field is usually called "Party" and is already populated correctly. The Table Plan even names each household for you - a group that shares a surname becomes "The Davies" automatically.
Guests with no household value are treated as individuals and placed according to the other seating constraints you have set.
Dietary notes
Dietary notes come across automatically from the dietary column. Common placeholder values that really mean "no requirements" - N/A, None, No, - - are cleared for you, so only real notes like "vegetarian," "gluten free," or "nut allergy" are kept.
Each guest's dietary note is kept on their record, under Food and access, and flows straight through to the caterer sheet you export, listed by seat, so the catering team gets one clean sheet with no chasing.
If you need to add or correct a note after import, open Guests, choose the guest, edit Dietary needs under Food and access, and press Save changes. The caterer export always reflects the current value, so you can make corrections right up until you send the final sheet.
Re-importing to sync your list
Your guest list will change between the day you first import it and your wedding day - new guests are added, details change, and the occasional cancellation comes in.
You can add or edit any guest by hand at any time: click "Add guest" or click an existing name to edit any field, and changes save automatically. The auto-seater and every export pick up the change immediately.
When a larger batch of changes has come in, just re-upload the updated CSV. The Table Plan syncs the list rather than duplicating it: guests already on your list are matched and kept, brand-new rows are added, and anyone no longer on the CSV is flagged for removal - you confirm before anything is deleted, so an accidental short export can never wipe your seated guests.
Once your list is imported and accurate, you are ready to lay out the room and run auto-seat. Head back to Getting Started for the full walkthrough, or open The Table Plan and get started now.