Instructions
How to prepare the app for your guests
None of this has to happen in one sitting, and nothing is irreversible until you publish. The order below is a suggestion, not a requirement — you can fill the panel in starting from any section. There is only one thing worth doing first: getting your guest list together, because the seating plan depends on it.
The short version: log in → enter your names and the date → upload the guest list → lay out the tables → fill in the schedule → publish → print the table cards with the QR code.
1. Logging in
There is no password. You give your email address on the login page and get a link — clicking it opens the panel. The link is single-use and short-lived, so next time you simply ask for a new one. The panel always lives at your-address.calm.wedding/admin.
2. Names, date and venues
The first screen of the panel. Your names go into the welcome in the guest app, the date goes into the calendar file guests can add to their phones. Venues (ceremony, reception) become tiles with an address and a button that opens directions.
Changing the date also moves the window in which guests can see the schedule and their seats. Before that window the app shows a welcome screen — deliberately, so the seating plan is not circulating in WhatsApp groups three weeks ahead.
3. The guest list
The most important section, and the only one with a natural claim to being first — the floor plan pins guests to tables, so the guests have to exist first.
- Paste text — any list, out of an email or a notes app.
- Upload a file — a spreadsheet (.xlsx, .ods) or a document (.docx, .odt). Leave the empty cells and blank rows in: to us those are the table boundaries.
- Type it in — the table underneath always works, including when the automatic read gets something wrong.
We do not accept a guest list as a photograph. That is not an oversight: the names of the people closest to you are not going out to an external model, and a photograph can only be read outside our own infrastructure. A file and pasted text we read on our own.
We will not read a PDF either — names come out of one mangled, and a mangled name at a wedding is worse than a clear "we can't". Export the list to .xlsx or .docx.
4. Floor plan and grounds
You draw the tables by dragging shapes, or upload a photograph of the plan and correct whatever we read out of it. Table names have to match the ones on the guest list — a guest whose table does not exist on the plan will see their seat described in words but will not find it on the map.
The grounds are the second scene of the same editor: parking, the fire pit, the marquee, the toilets. It is optional.
5. The schedule and the window
The hours of the ceremony, dinner, the first dance. You can paste them from your notes, upload a document, or photograph the running order — that one thing we do read from a photograph, because the pairing between an hour and its label lives in the layout of the page.
The same page sets the window: from when to when the app shows guests the schedule and their seats. It usually opens on the morning of the wedding.
6. Menu, attractions, look, captions
Everything below is optional and can be done at any point, including after publication.
- Menu and Attractions have their own switch — while they are empty, better to leave them off. An empty tab is worse than no tab.
- The look of the page — palette, typefaces, your photograph in the header, the order of the sections. Every ready-made theme has checked contrast. With your own colours the panel warns you if a pairing could be hard to read.
- Transport and challenges — late-night rides (the phone number becomes a tappable link) and photo challenges for guests.
- Captions in the app — if one of our sentences does not sound like you, rewrite it. We translate the change into the other languages automatically.
- Budget and Preparations — tools just for you, from the Wesele plan up and from the moment you publish. Want them early? Publish the page and leave it switched off for guests under Publication — the retention terms count from the wedding day, not from publication, so publishing early costs you nothing. Preparations holds a checklist with deadlines counted back from your wedding date and your own morning-of schedule (hair, makeup, the ride over) — separate from theRunning order a guest reads. Add to calendar puts both in your phone's calendar. No guest ever sees them.
Saving
Every section has its own Save button and saves separately. Until you save,Unsaved changes shows next to the button, and trying to move to another section or close the tab will make the browser ask. Do not leave two panel tabs open at once — the second tab does not know about the first one's save, and on saving it will ask you to refresh.
7. Publishing
Building is free. You pay once, at the moment of publication, and only then does your-address.calm.wedding start answering guests. Until then only you can see it.
After publication the address is yours permanently and cannot be changed — the QR codes printed on the cards have to lead there and nowhere else. The content you keep editing as normal: adding a guest the day before the wedding is completely ordinary.
A published page can be taken down temporarily — guests then see a "not just yet" screen instead of the app. The switch is on the publication page. It deletes nothing and refunds nothing; it is for a pause, not for backing out.
8. QR codes and printouts
In the panel, under Printouts, there are four A4 sheets to print (guests by table, the schedule, the menu, the attractions) plus table cards with the QR code. The code itself — for the invitations, for Canva, for a board at the entrance — you download from the first page of the panel, as a PNG or an SVG.
The codes appear only after publication. A code printed earlier would lead nowhere, and paper cannot be corrected after the fact.
9. After the wedding
The photographer's gallery shows up in the panel after publication — you upload the photos, guests open them in the same app. Photos from guests are stripped of their EXIF data, location included, before we store anything.
Under Gallery access you can hide the gallery or set one shared guest password. It protects guest photos and published photographer photos, not seating, schedule, menu or venues. Replacing or clearing the password invalidates earlier access.
Guest names are deleted 60 days after the wedding, on every plan — that is never a feature of a more expensive one. The photos and the page itself stay for as long as your plan says. We warn you by email at least 14 days ahead, always. The terms side by side: pricing.
Something is not working
Write to us — the contact page. Worth including your your-address.calm.wedding address and what was on the screen; with those we answer straight away, without a round of questions.