The four columns you need and the ones you do not
Full name, group, menu and requirements. With those four you can seat anybody and produce the kitchen sheet. The group is not technically required, but without it seating two hundred people is impossible: it is what turns a list into a map of families.
Everything else is surplus, and not for tidiness: for privacy. Guests’ phone numbers and addresses are personal data the venue does not need in order to lay out a room, and not holding them is the simplest way of not having to protect them.
Duplicate names, accents and double surnames
At a wedding of two hundred, the odds of two «Maria Garcia» are high. If they come in as two identical rows, seating one seats the other in the mind of whoever is doing it, and the mistake surfaces on the day with two people left standing.
The fix belongs to the list, not the software: ask for the second surname, or a distinguishing note in brackets — «(aunt)», «(cousin)». With accents and double surnames the rule is to write them the way the person writes them; one list with «Nuria» and another with «Núria» creates duplicates that are invisible when versions are merged.
What to do with «plus ones» and non-repliers
A «plus one» with no name is not a guest: it is a held place. It is worth treating it as such and giving it a recognisable provisional name — «Guest of Pere Vila» — so that it takes a chair and counts towards capacity, and so it can be swapped for the real name as soon as it arrives.
Non-repliers are the other half of the problem. The rule that works is not to seat them until they confirm, but to count them towards capacity until the cut-off date: taking them out of the count too early is what makes people not fit later.
Menus and allergies: where to put them so they reach the kitchen
On the guest’s own record, not in a free-text notes column. The difference is between a field you can count and text somebody has to read: with menu and requirements as fields, the kitchen sheet comes out on its own with the totals per menu and a list of who and at which table.
One distinction is worth keeping, because the law treats them differently: menu labels — gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian — are not medical diagnoses. The venue states what is in the dish; the final verification of the allergen is the establishment’s responsibility, and that nuance is worth making explicit on the document that goes to the kitchen.
The check before anybody is seated
Five minutes that save two hours. You check four things: that the guest total matches the one contracted, that there are no duplicates, that every menu is assigned, and that mobility requirements have a compatible table on the plan.
The last one is the most often forgotten and the worst on the day: a wheelchair seated at the table by the column, with ninety centimetres of gangway.