Excel & guest

In a separate column we have listed numbers "1, 2, 3" etc depending on if it's a couple, single or family. You can tally the real numbers in that column

I had two sheets in excel. One had the addresses with the way I wanted the names to appear, and another sheet was the alphabetized guest list (one name per line) with the table numbers, because my DOC wanted that. That also worked for final numbers.

I'm doing something similar but with Googledocs so my parents and fiancé can update it as well in real time. I have a first name column, a last name column, a title column, a number for the amount of people in the party and columns for each address line (address line 1, address line 2, city state zip). This means that one row would end up being one invite. If the person has a known guest, I add that person to their last name cell (Smith & Ms. Anne Jones) or put "& Guest" (Smith & Guest). I also have a column that combines the data from the title, first name, and last name (Mr. John Smith & Ms. Anne Jones). You can Google simple excel formulas for that combo (I would be more help from a laptop but I'm on my phone). At the bottom of the number in the party column, I put a Sum function. For invitation count, simply use a Count function for the name column, (or just highlight all the rows in a column and check the auto count in the bottom right hand corner). I hope this helps! And if you're new to Excel, I promise it's not that scary but totally can be lol.

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Sarah! That was so helpful, thank you! I'm going to attempt this

I'm using excel too, I list each name in a separate line and if they go together, in another column, I number them. Example below:
1 Smith, John
1 Smith, Jane
2 Doe, John
2 Doe, Jane
Then I use the count records function to get an accurate count. This way I can sort by number order and the ones that should be together stay together but I still get an accurate count.