A wedding app or a spreadsheet?
Most weddings start in a spreadsheet, and for a good reason: it is free, you already know how to use it, and for the guest list and the budget it is genuinely excellent. Plenty of weddings finish in one too.
This page is about where the sheet stops working, which is a narrower and more specific place than most wedding apps admit. If none of the three limits below apply to you, keep the spreadsheet β we publish free wedding spreadsheet templates for exactly that case.
Updated Stellanza wedding planning team
Stellanza is our own product. Competitor facts are verified from their public websites on the date shown, and we link every source.
Is a spreadsheet good enough for planning a wedding?
A spreadsheet is good enough for the guest list, the budget and the checklist, and for a wedding of around fifty people it is often the better tool: free, shared, familiar, and impossible to be locked out of. Excel and Google Sheets both do estimated against actual cost, plus-ones and meal columns, and shared editing between two partners better than most wedding apps do.
A spreadsheet cannot do three things. It cannot collect a reply β guests phone or message you, and somebody types their answer in by hand. It cannot send a personalised invitation with a link. And it cannot keep a seating plan in step with the guest list, so every late change means re-drawing the tables and re-checking who has moved. If those three are the parts that worry you, that is the moment a wedding app starts paying for itself; if they are not, the sheet is fine.
At a glance
| At a glance | Stellanza | Excel / Google Sheets |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free to 50 guests, then $20 once | Free |
| Collects RSVPs from guests | Yes, a link per guest | No β replies are typed in by hand |
| Sends invitations | Yes, personalised per guest | No |
| Seating plan | Drag-and-drop, stays in step with the list | Drawn by hand, goes stale |
| Shared editing | One login per wedding | Excellent |
| You can be locked out | If you lose the password | Effectively never |
Feature comparison
Verified against each product's public pages on September 3, 2026. Where a feature exists with a caveat, the caveat is written under it.
| Feature | Stellanza | Excel / Google Sheets |
|---|---|---|
| Guest list | Yes | Yes |
| Online RSVP | Yes | NoA spreadsheet cannot collect a reply. Answers arrive by phone, and somebody types them in. |
| Digital invitations | Yes | No |
| Seating chart with floor plan | Yes | PartialYou can draw a floor plan by hand in cells or shapes. Nothing keeps it in step with the guest list. |
| Automatic seating suggestions | YesA rule-based solver: it groups families, keeps guests you have marked as a conflict apart, and seats VIPs at the head table. Not a language model. | No |
| Budget tracker | Yes | Yes |
| Checklist and tasks | Yes | Yes |
| Vendor directory | NoNo supplier directory. Vendor names and contacts sit on the expense or task they belong to. | No |
| Wedding website | PartialA shareable wedding page β hero, event details, countdown, RSVP form β rather than a full multi-page website builder. | No |
| Gift registry | PartialNo gift registry. You can record what each guest gave, and it counts as income against the budget. | No |
| PDF or spreadsheet export | PartialGuest list to CSV, seating plan to PDF. There is no budget export yet. | Yes |
| Shared access for both partners | NoOne account per wedding. Separate logins for each partner do not exist yet. | YesShared editing is the one thing a spreadsheet is genuinely excellent at. |
| Interface in more than one language | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Works in the browser, nothing to install | Yes | PartialGoogle Sheets runs in a browser; desktop Excel is an install. |
| Usable outside the US and UK | Yes | Yes |
βNot documentedβ means the product does not say publicly whether it has this, so we do not claim either way.
What the spreadsheet does better
Shared editing, for one. Google Sheets lets both of you and your mother edit the same file at once, each with your own account, with a full history of who changed what. Stellanza has one login per wedding today, which is genuinely worse.
A spreadsheet is also permanent in a way software is not. It is a file you own, it opens in a dozen programs, and no company can change its pricing or close down and take it away. If you want a wedding record you can open in fifteen years, the sheet wins.
And it costs nothing at any size, where our free plan stops at 50 guests.
The three things it cannot do
These are the actual reasons couples move, and they are worth being specific about:
- It cannot receive an answer. Guests reply by phone, message and in person, and someone transcribes all of it β usually twice, once for attendance and once for the meal choice.
- It cannot send an invitation that is personal to each guest, so the link you share is the same for everybody and the sheet cannot tell who has opened it.
- It cannot keep the seating plan honest. The plan is drawn separately from the list, so a cancellation two weeks out means finding that person on the drawing, moving them, and re-checking every table's count by hand.
The middle path most couples actually want
You do not have to choose. Build the guest list in a spreadsheet, where it is fastest to type, and import it when the replies start arriving β Stellanza reads a CSV and maps common column headings automatically, in several languages. From there the RSVP links go out, the answers come back into the same list, and the seating chart is built from the guests who have actually said yes.
If you would rather not move at all, take the templates: our wedding budget, guest list and seating chart spreadsheets are free, need no account, and are built to be imported later if you change your mind.
Start in a spreadsheet, move when the replies start arriving. That is the point at which manual transcription starts costing more than the software does.
A rough rule of thumb
Under about 50 guests, one venue, one language and one person doing the organising, a spreadsheet will carry you to the day without complaint. Over about 100 guests, or with two families to seat, dietary requirements to collect, or guests who speak a different language from you, the transcription and the redrawing become the job β and that is what the software actually removes.
Frequently asked questions
Can I plan a whole wedding in Excel?
How do I collect RSVPs without a wedding app?
Is it worth paying for a wedding app?
Can I move my spreadsheet into Stellanza later?
Free tools to try first
Sources
Every competitor fact on this page was read from one of these pages. Products change; check the date beside a source before relying on it.
- 1.Stellanza β pricingStellanza
- 2.Stellanza β featuresStellanza
- 3.Google Sheets β online spreadsheet editorGoogle
More comparisons
Try Stellanza free
Guest list, invitations, RSVPs, seating chart and budget in one workspace, in your language. Free plan, no download.