The method comes in four moves: get your guests' first names at the moment they reply, wait for your deadline, name your tables, then settle first what isn't up for debate, while they are still empty. The first move happens weeks before the other three, and it's the one people forget.
At a hundred guests, what holds you up isn't the tool. It's the order: where to start, what to decide before what, and what to do about the parents' table. Here is that order, with what Invitez-nous does at each step. The seating itself opens with the Prestige plan.
Step 1 · get the first names before you send
The most valuable move in the whole method happens before your first send, and it is about places. In your list, every guest is given a number of places: they come alone, you grant them one to nine more, or you leave the number open. As soon as a guest has more than one, their form asks for the first name and surname of each person they are bringing, instead of the adult and child counters. If you leave their places open, those names are asked for anyway, as soon as one of your tables exists or the entry pass, which opens with the Signature plan, is switched on.
That is the decision, and in practice there is no going back on it: you will only have those first names if you asked for them at the moment of the reply. With them, each guest appears as a name tag you move, one per person: you can then seat a child at the children's table and leave their parents elsewhere. Without them, the household is one block marked with a number, and it sits down in one piece.
One reservation, and it matters: these first names can only be entered from a personal link, and from a guest who came through the invitation's public link you will only get a block. Everything you can ask each guest, places included, is set out in the article on online RSVP.
Step 2 · wait for your deadline, then read the count
You only seat people whose attendance is confirmed. A guest who hasn't replied doesn't appear on the seating screen, and neither does one who has declined: the confirmed ones arrive there as the replies come in, and nothing stops you seating some from the very first.
Nothing except common sense: moving people costs more than seating them. So wait for your deadline, let the reminders do their work, and open the screen the day after. Nothing obliges you to: it is simply the advice of this method, and it will save you an evening.
The screen shows two numbers: the people confirmed, and the name tags left to seat. A household whose first names you don't have makes only one name tag. If the two numbers are equal before you start, you have every first name.
Step 3 · name your tables, in the order you will want to read them
A table carries a name of your choosing and an optional number of seats. With no number of seats, it has no limit at all. The number of tables has no cap either.
Two decisions. First the name: write an intention rather than a number. Nothing else keeps a record of your reasoning, since the guest groups you may have made elsewhere do not sort this screen: the name of the table is all that records it, and it is what you will read back on the day.
Then the seats. Set them, because a table that has them refuses one seating too many, with a message that names it and gives its count. But don't set them down to the last chair: keep two or three free on each table, and a guest who replies late won't cost you a reshuffle.
Tables are shown in the order you created them, and that order cannot be changed. So create them in the order you will want to go through them: the families, then the friends, then the colleagues.
Step 4 · seat first what is not open to discussion
Start with the tables that allow only one solution, while all the others are still empty. The parents' table, the witnesses' table, the two or three people whose seat is not up for negotiation. The rest always works itself out; those don't.
With a mouse, you drag a name tag onto a table. With a finger, it takes two taps: you tap the person, then the table. When the first names are known, a button on the name tag seats the rest of the household in one go, wherever one of their own is already sitting. That is the only help with seating, and there is no other.
The awkward cases, one by one
The two families. There is no neighbour constraint at all: you cannot write "don't seat X next to Y" anywhere and count on the tool to remember it. That judgement stays entirely yours, which is exactly why it is made first, on an empty screen, while you still have every table in front of you.
The friend who knows nobody. Create their table before you look for somewhere to put them, and name it after what the people around it will have in common rather than with a number. That is the only place your intention is kept.
The guest who replies late. They don't appear until they have confirmed, then they turn up on their own among the people to seat. Hence the two or three seats kept free in step 3.
The one who pulls out after being seated. Their seat is given back at once, and the table counts it as free again. It quietly shows its number of withdrawals, so you know whether the empty seats had been waiting for you all along or whether people have just stepped back. And if the guest changes their reply again, they get their seat back, provided nobody has taken it in the meantime.
The household that corrects its list. When a guest sends their reply again with one person fewer or one more, the first names that are kept keep their table, the one who is removed leaves theirs, and the new one turns up among the people to seat. You don't have to redo the table.
The table you no longer want. Deleting it loses nobody: the people at it go back among the people to seat, and the message tells you so.
What Invitez-nous does not do
Better said plainly, so that nobody buys it for that.
No automatic seating. No suggestions, no balancing of tables. Nothing picks a table for you.
No floor plan. A table has no shape, no size and no position: the screen is a list of named cards, not a room seen from above.
Nothing to print. No board for the entrance, no place cards. For a list to take with you, there is the export, described below.
Your guests don't see their table. Who sits where stays with you. On the day, you are the one who reads it: in the door scanner, the name of the table appears next to each person, both on the scan and in the backup list. The entry pass and that check-in are a separate feature, which opens with the Signature plan.
Dietary requirements are not shown on the tables. You read them in the replies table, and in the list export, which opens with the Signature plan: it carries a "Table" column with one line per person, plus-ones included, and the household's requirements on the main guest's line.
In practice
The seating plan opens with the Prestige plan, and it puts no cap on the number of people you can seat. If you are still at the step before, the one where the replies don't come in, that is where to start: getting your guests to reply at last. And if your date hasn't been announced yet, the sending calendar says where each step falls.
Open a sample invitation on your phone to see what your guests receive, or compare the plans line by line.
