How do I add guests and send invitations?

Open Manage → Guests and press Add guests; on the website, add a name and email address under One at a time. In an app version before 1.3, open Manage → Invite instead. You can also save an optional mobile phone number for reference. Invitations still require email; entering a number does not opt the guest into texts. A number can belong to one guest on a list: if another guest already has it, you're told who, and the guest isn't added until you change the number or leave it out. To change or remove a number later, press Change number (or Add number): it is under Contact when you open the guest, and on the guest's row in an app version before 1.3.

In the iPhone and iPad app, Pick from contacts beside Add a guest fills in a guest from one card in your contacts. The card you picked is shown in place of the Add a guest form, where you can check and edit it; if it has more than one address or number, choose which. Press Add to list to save it and go back to the form, or Leave out to drop it. To add another person, press Pick from contacts again. A card with no email address is dimmed and can't be picked, since the invitation goes by email. The app never asks for access to your whole address book and keeps nothing from a card beyond the row you save. The Android app and the web don't offer this.

As you type a name, an email address or a phone number, guests from other events you hosted who match are suggested under the field, on the website and in the app. Pick one to fill in their name, email and phone as you gave them last time, check it, and press Add. On the website, the arrow keys move through the suggestions, Enter picks one and Escape closes them.

To browse instead, open From your past events under the form. Search it by name, address or event, and press Add beside a guest, or Everyone from an event to add everyone from it who isn't already on the list. After adding several at once, Undo takes them off again, except anyone who is being invited, has been invited, has answered or has been changed since. Personal events you co-hosted are not included.

Someone who unsubscribed from one of your events is marked Unsubscribed and can't be picked or added. Only who they are is copied: nothing they wrote or answered. If a past guest's phone number already belongs to another guest on this list, they're added without it and you're told who.

At a venue, coordinators, hosts and co-hosts see the guests of the venue's own events when adding to another of its own events. An event handed to a host from outside the venue keeps its guests with that host.

Publish the event before sending invitations: until then, Guests says Invitations can go out once you publish and has no send button, and Publish is at the top of the event. Check the guest link and who can come, then press the send button on Guests, such as Send 12 email invitations. It asks for a second press, saying how many will go, and the second press sends them. An app version before 1.3 has it on Invite and asks in a confirmation instead.

Once the event is published, Add guests has a send button of its own at the bottom, such as Send 3 invitations, counting only the guests you added since you opened it who still need one. A guest you added with Answer for them on is not counted. It asks for a second press too. In the app this needs version 1.3 or later.

Invitations come from you by name. Until you have given one, guests would see your email address instead, so sending waits: Guests asks What name should guests see? first (Invite does, in an app version before 1.3). Your event's Overview asks it too, ahead of everything else there, publishing included, until you give a name; a co-host or coordinator is never asked for theirs there (in an app version before 1.4, only Guests asks). If you have answered an invitation here before, the name you gave on that reply is filled in; press Save to use it, or change it first.

Adding someone to the list does not send anything. The bulk send leaves already-invited guests alone, and anyone who has already answered, including an answer you recorded for them: open them and press Send the invitation to email them the link anyway. Email cannot be recalled once sent.

On the website, once the event is over, the send controls are no longer offered: an invitation to an event that has already happened has nowhere to go. The list itself stays.

Each row on your list is an invitation; your headcount comes from the guests named in the replies. Each invitation also sets how many people it may name, under Can include up to; How do I let guests bring a plus-one? has the details. A guest list holds 500 invitations, counting those who added themselves through the link and answers you typed in yourself, and 1,000 guests can answer.