SHE SAID: MESS-LESS GUEST LIST

By Jolene Jang ~ Guest Blogger

Do you have a master guest list you will be using for the bachelor and bachelorette parties, bridal shower, and the wedding? Most likely your parents have their friends they want to invite. Your in-laws have their people and the contacts for relatives you have never heard of. To get all these names, emails and addresses into an effective spreadsheet, you have a few options.

Your choices are to have the parties do the following:

• Dictate their contacts info to you and you input them into a doc
  


• Send you a hard copy and you input them into a doc
  


• Fill out an excel sheet and email to you and you copy and paste
  

Who has time for this? The excel option is a good option, except for only one person can update the master list at a time or you can do separate sheets and copy and paste them into the master. If you have three or more people to collaborate this is confusing and timely. We haven’t heard from Aunt Gertrude in thirty six years, but Uncle Bud twice removed may know her last house, but Uncle Bud is in on an RV trip and he doesn’t have a cell phone. You see what I am saying. All this time, you are waiting for the guest list to return to you. Or they email you back and forth with the latest updates to the list.

Duplicates, triplicates, quadruplicates? It can be confusing and frustrating. Emailing documents back in and forth can be sloppy and lots of room for error.
Here is a free, easy and visual solution to create the “Mess-less Guest List.” This document sharing tool keeps everyone up to date with the latest version. Zoho.com is the answer. We tried google.docs for a while, but zoho is more user -friendly and has much more utility.

Here is a video on how to sign up for an account and get started. You can also follow the steps below.

1. Sign up for a free account.
   
   
2. Name your project (I project is free).
   
   
3. Invite your users, for example, bride, groom, event planner, mother, father, in-laws, siblings, (the people who need to keep in touch with each other for the planning process.) They will get an email invitation to log in.
   
   
4. Add your milestones such as the actual events or deadlines, ie bridal shower, bachelorette party, send invitations, catering headcount deadline.
   
   
5. Add tasks to accomplish the goal, assign the task to a user and create a start and/or end date. An email will notify them of the task.
   
   
6. Schedule meetings related to your project. You can schedule other users.
   
   
7. Go to the documents tab. Upload your guest list. Click on the users to share this document with them. Request they make their edits online using the zoho editor, not downloading it. Everyone will have the latest changes.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

To see how you can setup meetings and share files watch the following video.



This is a great way to collaborate with your family and friends with clarity and accountability, eliminating all the duplicate documents. It’s time and stress reliever.