How do I run awards at my event?

Open Manage → Features and press Turn on on the Awards card. Awards needs nothing else: an event with no RSVPs, no guest list and no projector can run them.

Awards is on the website today and comes to the Cut the Cake app with version 1.2. Until then, run it from a browser, on a phone or a computer.

Awards are run by the people who can see the event's photos and guestbook: you, your co-hosts, and a venue's coordinators on its own events. Event staff cannot open the tab.

Where things stand

The top of the Awards tab shows five steps: Set up, Nominations, Voting, Envelopes and Winners. Each has one line under it: the time it starts, or its number once it is running. Press a step to read what happens in it. The step you are in carries the one button for that moment, such as Close voting or Reveal. As you reveal each award, its winner appears under the steps, the newest largest.

Name the awards

On the Awards tab, press Add an award, at the top of the awards; with no award named yet, the form is already open. Choose what wins it (A guest, A dish or A photo), then press one of the suggestions under Pick one, which adds it, or type a name under Or name your own and press Add award. Each award is a card of its own, with an icon for what wins it. One to three is plenty. An event can have up to 12.

Until voting closes you can rename an award, add another, or Remove one, pressed twice, which also removes its nominations. With two or more awards, each has a grip beside its name: drag it to move the award. While you drag, the awards fold to their titles so the list fits, and on the website the arrow keys on a grip move it too. Once voting is open, an award somebody has voted in keeps its name and cannot be removed: its Remove is dimmed, and pressing it says to Hide the award instead. They are revealed in the order listed.

Hide on an award takes it off guests' pages, the ballot and the screen until you press Show, and its nominees and votes are kept. A hidden award moves under Hidden, a row below the awards that shows how many it holds. While it is hidden nobody can vote in it or nominate for it, it cannot be revealed, and it gets no winner the next morning. An award can be hidden until it is revealed.

Nominations

Guests nominate from their own page, or with no account from the ballot's link, one nomination each for each award, which they can change. From the link a guest picks a person from the list, a dish from the Potluck sheet or one they type, or a photo booth picture, and the entry says who nominated it. While Photos is on, they can also send one photo from their phone as their nomination; it joins the album under their name, where you can hide or bin it. The link never shows the album. To choose every nominee yourself, turn off Guests can nominate in the Awards sheet; while it is off, an award with fewer than two nominees says Add at least two nominees, or turn on Guests can nominate. Either way you can add to the ballot: press Add a nominee on an award. The picker stays open after each one and says it is on the ballot, so you can add several; press Done when you have finished.

• A photo is picked from the album or the photo booth. You can tick several and press Nominate 3 photos (the button counts them); each becomes its own entry. Upload a photo, above the photos, adds up to five pictures from your device to the album and ticks them. If Photos was off, uploading turns it on, and guests can then add pictures too. A draft or a wrapped-up event has no upload.
• A dish comes from the Potluck sign-up sheet when Potluck is on: the dishes guests signed up to bring are offered first, each with who is bringing it. Add a dish by name types one that is not on the sheet, and with Potluck off every dish is typed. Add a description adds a line saying what it is.
• A guest is picked from the people who answered Yes. Add someone else types somebody who is not on the list, such as a walk-in. Add a description adds the line the room knows them by, such as "inflatable dinosaur".

Above the photos, the picker offers filters where they would narrow anything: Album or Booth when the event has both, Mine for photos you added, Added by with a name for each person who added one, and When with each hour of the party that has photos. Pick as many as you like: choices in one row widen it, and each further row narrows it. The picker then says how many are showing, such as "12 of 40", and Clear takes the filters off. The button that nominates stays at the foot of the screen while you scroll.

A dish or a guest can have a picture from the album or the booth beside it: press Add a picture. Each dish and each guest is given a number in the order it was entered, so a card on the table can carry it. The same thing nominated twice is one entry, and an award holds up to 40.

Until voting closes, each dish award says under its name where its dishes come from, such as "From the Potluck sheet · 6 dishes signed up". To keep an award to part of the sheet, press Choose categories on it (Change while the sheet has no categories yet), pick the categories that are in the running, such as Desserts for a best dessert, and press Save. You and your guests are then offered only the sign-ups in those categories for that award, and Every dish puts the whole sheet back. None, dishes are typed in takes one award off the sheet altogether while Potluck stays on for the event: nobody is offered a sign-up for it, and every dish is typed. A dish that was already entered stays on the ballot, and so do its votes; to take one dish out, press Hide on it. Something a guest offered that was not on your list belongs to no category, so it is offered only while the award takes every dish. A dish can still be typed for any award. With Potluck off the line says so, and Potluck settings opens the Potluck sheet.

Guests choose from the people coming only when guests can see who's coming. With that off, you name the nominees for any award a guest can win, unless Who can vote is Anyone at the party: then guests type a person's name, and a name already on that ballot is refused. Guests can still nominate photos and dishes.

When nominations and voting open and close

Both open when the party starts, and guests keep nominating while voting is open. Before then, guests see the awards on their page.

• Open nominations now on the tab opens nominations early.
• Voting opens in the Awards sheet is Now, When the party starts, or Custom, a time during the party. Once nominations are open, the tab also offers Open voting now.
• Close voting on the tab closes it, and is offered once voting is open and an award has a nominee. Otherwise voting closes at the event's end time.

Reopen voting is offered after you close it, until the first reveal or the end time. Once an award is revealed, voting stays closed.

Who can vote

Each person on an answer of Yes has one ballot, with one vote for each award. A ballot is cast one of two ways, whichever comes first:

• From the account that answered. The guest's Awards page asks Who is voting? and lists everyone on their answer.
• By name, at the code. Somebody with no account opens the ballot's link, picks their name and votes. Names are offered only while guests can see who's coming.

You and your co-hosts vote without answering your own invitation. While nominations or voting are open, the Awards tab has a Your ballot card: press Open your ballot, which reads Vote once voting is open, and the guest's Awards page opens with you as the voter, whatever Who can vote says. Your vote is counted in the turnout once you cast it. If you answer Yes to your own invitation, you vote as the people on your answer instead: a vote you had cast as a host stops counting and does not carry over, so your Awards page asks you to choose again. A co-host who is removed, or a host who hands the event on, stops being counted as a host at once. A venue's coordinators and event staff have no ballot unless they are on the guest list.

Under Who can vote in the sheet, Anyone at the party also lets somebody the list does not know type a name of up to 20 characters, pick one of 12 icons and vote. A typed name cannot repeat one already voting or one on the guest list. This is an honor system: one ballot for each phone.

With Voting for yourself off, as it is for a new event, nobody can vote for their own name, a photo they added or a dish they signed up to bring. A phone voting with no account is known only by its name. Anybody may vote for something they nominated.

The ballot's link and code

While Awards is on and you have named an award, the Awards tab has a The ballot's link card with Copy the link, and Awards settings has the same button under Who can vote. Who the link is any use to follows that rule: with People on the guest list, a guest picks their name from the people who said they are coming, and somebody not on the list is pointed to the invitation where anyone with the link may answer it; with Anyone at the party, they type a name and vote. No projector is needed and nobody has to sign in. Until nominations open, or until voting opens where guests cannot nominate, the page lists the awards and waits. The Awards tab draws no code of its own: a code for the room to scan is on the projector.

The link works while Show a code guests can scan is on in Projector settings, as it is unless you turned it off.

On the projector, guests need only the one code already on the screen. From the time nominations open it is there even with no photos, the words under it say what it opens (Photos and voting, or Vote before the booth has taken anything), and its page shows the awards above the photos with a Nominate for tonight's awards button while nominations are open and Vote for tonight's awards once voting is.

Hide or remove an entry, or remove a voter

In an award's Nominations, Hide takes an entry off the ballot, until that award is revealed. Votes for a hidden entry are dropped, and each of those voters is asked to choose again. A hidden entry moves under Hidden, a row below the others that shows how many it holds; open it and press Show to put one back.

An entry you or a co-host added also has Remove. Press it, then Remove for good: the entry is deleted and cannot be put back, and anyone who voted for it is asked to choose again. A guest's nomination has no Remove; hide it instead.

When a nominated guest takes themselves out, the entry moves under Hidden too, marked Took themselves out, and you cannot put it back or remove it. A nominated photo that is removed from the album leaves the ballot the same way a hidden entry does.

People voting from a phone with no account are listed on the tab. Remove, pressed twice, frees the name and drops its ballot. Anything that phone nominated stays on the ballot with its name; hide an entry to take it off. Use it for a name on the screen you do not want there, or for a guest who finds their name already taken.

What stays sealed

While voting is open and at least one award has a nominee, you see how many people have voted, and nothing about who is ahead. You see who is voting from a phone, never what a ballot says. Once you reveal an award, you see every entry's count. Guests see the winner only, unless you turn on After a reveal, guests see every count.

Reveal the winners

After voting closes, the tab names the next award and offers a Reveal button for it. Press it, then press again to confirm. A reveal fixes the result for good.

If a screen is showing the projector, it plays the nominees and then the winner, and guests' phones show the winner once the screen has. With no screen, every phone shows it at once. With a screen up, leave 21 seconds between reveals; a press before then is refused until the screen has finished. Between photos, the screen also shows an awards slide: tonight's awards, then how many have voted, then the winners. With no photos yet, that slide stays up. The screen shows one code for guests at a time: the banner's while the banner is on, and the slide's own otherwise.

Play that reveal again replays a revealed award on the screen, until the next morning.

If two or more entries share the most votes, they share the award. If nobody voted, the award says there is no winner.

If you press nothing

Voting closes at the end time, and any winner you have not revealed appears on guests' pages at 9:00 AM the next morning, or the same morning for a party that ends after midnight. The winners stay on guests' pages as long as the event does.

The rules in the sheet

Press Awards settings at the top of the tab, or Edit on the card:

• Guests can nominate, on for a new event.
• Voting opens, when the party starts unless you set it.
• Who can vote: Anyone at the party, as a new event starts, or People on the guest list. An event made before October 10, 2026 starts on People on the guest list.
• Voting for yourself, off for a new event.
• After a reveal, guests see every count, off for a new event.

Turning Awards off hides it from guests; the awards, nominations and votes are kept.