While planning your wedding, your guest list is one of those things you’ll probably look at every day. It is a huge piece of the Wedding Planning puzzle. The most efficient way to organize all of your addresses in with a Guest List Excel Spreadsheet. We happen to have a FREE one you can download 😉 Once you have all of your addresses in Spreadsheet form, you can do a Mail Merge for shipping labels.
Tutorial Read | How to Mail Merge your Wedding Guest List
3 Reasons to Mail Merge your Wedding Guest List
Although shipping labels cannot be used for your outer envelopes of the formal invitations, there are several reasons why a Mail Merge is an awesome idea. Not only will you be organized, but you’ll also be efficient!
1- Event Address Labels
It’s true, you cannot put sticky labels on the actual wedding invitations {#etiquette} but you can absolutely put those little labels on any other piece of wedding stationery you’re mailing! You can print shipping labels for all of these things:
- Engagement Party Invitations
- Engagement Party Thank You Cards
- Save-the-Dates
- Bridal Shower Invitations
- Bridal Shower Thank You Cards
- Rehearsal Dinner Invitations
- Wedding Gift Thank You Cards
2- Formatting your Addresses for Handwriting on Envelopes
The reason is truly a must-do if you are having your outer envelopes handwritten by a calligrapher or even by friends and family. You will eventually have an evening where you’ll tackle addressing envelopes. Print your Mail Merged labels on a blank piece of paper, not on the shipping label stickers. There are 24 labels of the Avery 8160 per sheet of paper. That means for a Guest List Total od 100 you’ll print approximately 4+ sheets.
Divide and Conquer
If you have people helping you address outer envelopes by hand, you can divide and conquer the task. Hand each of them a sheet of the 24 addresses. They’ll be able to copy your merged format exactly which eliminates errors. Your Merged printouts are much easier to read than straight from the Spreadsheet. Plus, this way you can cross off the would-be label when they invitation is addressed. Your outer envelopes can be conquered by delegation too if you’re handing these 24-address printouts to your Calligrapher. He or She will also appreciate the perfect formatting!
3- RSVP Tracking
I have a little secret to share… You can be even more organized than you may have thought. This formatting system via the Mail Merge is a fantastic way to help track your RSVP returns. Beleive it or not, all of your guests may not ever respond to your invitation. By numbering your guests you can determine who has responded and who has not.
Adding an RSVP Tracking Merge Field
Just as you did in the How to Mail Merge your Wedding Guest List post, insert a Merge Field for your RSVP Number Column. You’ll learn about this in Guest List Mini-Series onTeachable for the Wedding Guest List Excel Spreadsheet. Make it very small so you can barely see it and put it down in the right-hand corner. Yet, another reason you won’t want to print these on shipping labels, that number wouldn’t look very cute there!
This corner number is your guests’ assigned RSVP number. When you and your team are addressing invitations, write this same number in the bottom right corner, very small again, of their RSVP card that goes inside the invitation. Most guests know how to send in an RSVP card, but some do not. You’ll receive RSVP cards back that have no name on them, or they simply won’t come back ever. The trick is to organize them by number once they do come in. Think recipe cards in a box. This strategy makes it so that you can easily look at the numbers in order to determine who is missing a few weeks before the wedding. You can also compare the RSVP number that comes back with no name on it and know who it is assigned to. Ta-Da!
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