Help centre
Answers for hosts and guests
Everything from the first occasion to the last reminder. If you were sent a personal link and just want to reply, skip to the section written for guests.
Getting started
Your first occasion
An occasion is the whole celebration. Everything else lives inside it.
How do I create an occasion?
Sign in with your email address and create your first occasion. One form names the occasion and its first event, so you finish with something real: a wedding weekend with a ceremony in it, a birthday with the dinner already set. Events, guests, questions and the invitation design all come afterwards.
How many events can one occasion hold?
As many as the celebration needs: welcome drinks, ceremony, reception, farewell brunch. The free plan holds 1 event so you can see the whole flow before paying, and the paid plans do not cap events at all, because one price covers the whole celebration rather than each party in it.
How are dates and times handled?
Each occasion has a timezone, and every event starts with it. Times are shown to guests in the event's own timezone, which matters when part of your guest list is flying in from somewhere else.
What is the occasion's web address?
Each occasion gets a short web address, generated from the name when you create it and editable in Settings. It has to be unique to your account, and it names the files you export. Guests never use it: each household has its own personal link, so tidying up the address later cannot break an invitation you have already sent.
Your guest list
Households, guests and who is invited
The guest list is built in households, because that is how invitations are actually sent.
What is the difference between a household and a guest?
A household is whoever receives one invitation: a couple, a family, a friend living alone. Guests are the named people inside it. You invite guests to events one by one, but the greeting, the email and the link belong to the household, and one person can answer for all of them.
Can I import the spreadsheet I already have?
Yes. Upload a CSV with a header row, match your columns to household, first name, last name, email, tags and plus-ones, then check the preview before anything is saved. Rows that share a household name become one household. You can add a column per event with yes or 1 to say who is invited to what; leave those out and everyone is invited to everything. Rows with a missing first name, a bad email address or a duplicate are listed as skipped instead of quietly imported.
How do plus-ones work?
Set how many extra guests a household may bring. When they RSVP they name those guests themselves, and the names arrive in your list as real guests. A plus-one is invited to the same events as the household that brought them.
What are tags for?
Tags are your own labels, separated by commas: family, work, bride's side, staying at the hotel. They do nothing on their own, but you can filter the guest list and the responses by tag, which is how you count one side of the room or one table without a spreadsheet.
Who gets the RSVP link?
Every household with an email address on it. One email per household, one link inside it. Households without an email address are never emailed, and the composer tells you how many of those you have before you send. Open one of them, copy the personal link, and pass it on by message or in person.
How large can my guest list be?
The free plan includes 25 guests. Paid plans include more and sell extra guests in blocks, up to 1000 in total on the largest plan. Adding a guest is checked against that limit as you go, so you find out before the invitations, not after.
Invitations and RSVP
One link per household
No accounts, no passwords, no app. The link is the whole thing.
How does the one-link RSVP actually work?
Each household has one personal link. Opening it shows your invitation design, their greeting, only the events they were invited to, and a yes or no for each named guest. One person answers for everyone. If two people in the household submit at the same time, we load the newer answers and ask the second person to check them before saving, so nobody is silently overwritten.
Do guests need to create an account?
Never. There is nothing to install and nothing to remember. That also means the link is a credential: anyone holding it can answer for that household, so it should go to them and nobody else.
Can guests change an answer after they send it?
Yes, until the RSVP deadline you set in Settings. They open the same link and submit again, and your numbers update immediately. After the deadline the form closes and guests are told to contact you, so your final count stops moving while the caterer is waiting.
Can I ask my own questions?
Yes. Add a meal choice, dietary needs, a song request, anything. Each question can be a short answer, one choice or several choices; asked for every event or just one; required or optional; and answered by each guest separately or once by the household. Guests only see a question after they have said yes to the event it belongs to.
Can guests add the events to their calendar?
Yes. As soon as someone in the household accepts an event, an add-to-calendar link appears beside it and downloads a standard calendar file that Apple Calendar, Google Calendar and Outlook all understand, with the time, the venue and the address already in it.
What do guests see before they RSVP?
The invitation you designed: a theme, your own colours, a photo if you uploaded one, and the blocks of text you wrote. You edit it as a draft and publish when you are happy, so guests never see a half-finished page. Before your first publish, guests see a plain version of the same invitation rather than nothing at all.
Sending email
Invitations, reminders and what comes back
Messages go out from the occasion, one per household, and the results come back to the same place.
How do I send the invitations?
Open Messages, write a subject and a short note, and choose who it goes to: everyone, the households that have not answered, or a few you pick. We build the email around your note, with the events and that household's own RSVP button. Send a test to yourself first, which takes one click and shows you exactly what they will get.
How do reminders find the people who have not replied?
Choose the reminder type and send it to households that have not answered. That audience is worked out at the moment the message sends, not when you write it, so anyone who replies in between is left alone. Nobody gets nagged for something they already did.
Can I schedule a message for later?
On the paid plans, yes. Pick a date and time in the occasion's timezone, and cancel it any time before it starts sending. On the free plan you send messages yourself, whenever you are ready.
Could a guest be emailed twice?
No. Each message records one delivery per household before anything is sent, and a delivery is only ever sent once, even if a send is retried after a hiccup. You will see the counts move from queued to sent to delivered as they go.
What happens if a guest unsubscribes?
Invitations and reminders carry an unsubscribe link, as the law requires. If a guest uses it we stop emailing that address, and the message shows them as unsubscribed rather than pretending they were reached. Their RSVP link keeps working, so you can still pass it to them yourself.
What happens to email that bounces?
The result comes back to the message: delivered, bounced, or a spam complaint. A permanent bounce, such as an address that does not exist, sets that address aside so we do not keep mailing it. A temporary one, such as a full mailbox, is retried for you. Correct the address on the household and the next message goes to the new one.
For guests
You were sent a link
If you are replying to someone else's invitation, this is the short version.
What is this link I was sent?
It is your household's invitation. It shows the events you are invited to and lets you reply for everyone in your household at once. It was made for you, so please do not post it anywhere public.
Do I need an account or a password?
No. Open the link, answer for each person, and submit. It works on a phone as well as a laptop, and there is nothing to install.
I said yes and now I cannot come.
Open the same link and change your answer. You can do that until the hosts' deadline. If the form has already closed, contact your hosts and they can update it for you.
My link does not work.
First check that you copied all of it from the email, since these links are long and easy to cut short. If it still does not open, ask your hosts to send it again: links are personal, and a host can issue a fresh one at any time, which stops the old one working.
Privacy and your data
It stays yours
Your guest list is other people's personal information. Here is how to get it out, and how to take it down.
Can I export my guest list?
Any time. Export CSV on the guest list gives you every household, guest, tag, invitation, RSVP answer and question answer, ready for a spreadsheet, a caterer or a seating plan. The file also contains each household's personal link, so keep it as carefully as you would a list of passwords.
How do I delete a guest or a household?
Open the household and delete it, or select several on the guest list and delete them together. That permanently removes those guests, their invitations and their answers, and their link stops working straight away.
How do I delete a whole occasion?
In Settings, type the occasion's name to confirm. It permanently deletes the occasion with its events, guests and responses. There is no undo, so export first if you want a copy.
How careful should we be with the personal links?
Treat them like keys. Anyone holding a household's link can open that invitation and answer for them, so send a link to the household it belongs to and keep it out of public pages and group chats that reach further. If one goes astray, replace it on that household: the new link works immediately and the old one stops.
What can a guest ask us to remove?
Whatever they gave you: their name, their email address, their answers. Delete the guest or the household and it is gone from the occasion. Guests can also unsubscribe themselves from your emails without asking anyone.
Still stuck
Ask us directly
Write to support@aavo.ca and a person will answer. Tell us which occasion you are working on and what you expected to happen; it usually saves a round trip.