How To Format Your Guest List
Photo by Nikki Daskalakis
Oh, address lists. This is an inherent part of any stationery design that involves mailing — we can’t escape them as much as we might want to (and I know that when your Cousin Judy has been avoiding your texts and emails about updating her address for the fourteenth time you feel me on that).
In the spirit of making this one piece of things a little easier — and to serve as a reference for any of you who may be putting together your lists without a stationer or who want to have things ready to go for your future stationer! — here are my best practices for formatting your guest address list (there’s also a freebie at the end!).
File Format: Every stationer will have their preferences, but speaking for myself and many of my colleagues, we love a plain ol’ Excel spreadsheet. This works best for any envelopes we are actually printing (rather than handwriting). Honestly, when I’m doing calligraphy I generally prefer Excel, too, so I can reformat and adjust your list to my liking. Luckily, Excel is probably the easiest way for you to track your addresses, and most planning software you’ll use with your planner (like Aisle Planner) lets you export your list as an Excel doc, too.
Columns on Columns: The best formatting pro-tip for your list is to keep everything organized in columns. While most planning software will do this automatically for you (along with providing columns for RSVPs and other important planning info), if you’re starting from scratch those columns might be:
Formal Guest Name(s) — written out how you’d like them to appear on the envelope, like “Mr. Thomas Fullerton and Mr. Richard Fullerton” above. (Hot tip!: see our blog on 21st Century Etiquette for examples of your options here!)
Street Address Line One
Street Address Line Two (for addresses with apartments or suites)
City (spelled out)
State (spelled out)
Zip Code (make sure this column is set to “text” so your New England-area addresses don’t lose their front zeroes!)
Country (typically you will only include this if you have international addresses, and for my U.S. folks you can leave this column blank for domestic addresses)
Optional: it’s increasingly rare these days, but if you’re including a formal inner envelope you would also include a column for those simplified names (just titles and names, so our above example becomes Mr. Fullerton and Mr. Fullerton, or for close family you might do Uncle Tommy and Uncle Richie).
Spell It Out: Envelope designs with font addressing (i.e. not handwritten or calligraphed) typically use a tool called Data Merge in Adobe InDesign to turn your Excel spreadsheet into your actual proofed envelopes. With this tool, your text is placed directly from your OG spreadsheet columns into the envelope design file. While your stationer will be checking for errors and obvious misspellings, it does make our lives much easier and get you your proofs faster if you spell things out (like “North Carolina” vs. “NC”) right from the get go.
Proofread: Our brains are made for efficiency, not catching typos in something we’ve read 1,000 times. Get someone (or ideally multiple someones!) who haven’t been staring at your address doc to go through it with fresh eyes. 👀 This is especially important for names — your stationer doesn’t know your guests personally (maybe your friend’s parents did name him Choarles!) and we don’t want to make an ass of u and me by assuming you’ve made any typos in your list.
And that’s address list formatting, friends! I do highly recommend you check in with your specific stationer (or printer) to see if they have different recommendations — calligraphers especially all have our own quirky preferences, and it’s best practice to check in with your vendor before doing all the work to reformat.
If you are starting from a blank document — wait! Download my simple Excel template instead that has columns already labeled for you. 😘