Bridal Shower Planning Checklist, Excel and Google Sheets, Guest List Budget Tracker

You type one date. All 34 deadlines fill themselves in.

A printed bridal shower checklist tells you “eight weeks before: book the venue” and leaves you to do that arithmetic thirty-four more times. This one carries the weeks on each task and works the due date out from your shower date. Move the date and every deadline moves with it.

WHAT YOU TYPE

• The shower date.
• What the hosts are spending between them.

That is the setup. Open the Checklist tab and the dates are already there.

WHAT IS INSIDE

• Checklist — 34 tasks in the order they need doing, from agreeing the date with the bride to assigning someone to write down who gave what. Each has a due date, a Who column, and a status that turns OVERDUE by itself.
• Guest List — 100 rows. Invites, RSVPs, plus-ones, gifts and thank-yous. The head count adds plus-ones automatically, because that is the number the caterer is asking for.
• Budget — 13 categories, planned against actual, with the difference and the running total worked out.
• Read Me First — days to go, how far through the checklist you are, who is coming, who has not replied, and what is left to spend.

FOR THE HOST, NOT THE BRIDE This is the maid of honour’s file. It assumes you have never done this before and that the timeline is the part nobody tells you. The tasks are in the order they actually need doing, and only three are genuinely date-critical — the quickstart says which three and why.

WORKS IN BOTH Excel and Google Sheets. Drag it into Google Drive and every formula, dropdown and colour carries over, then share it with your co-hosts so you are all looking at one list instead of three group chats.

TWELVE WEEKS OR SIX The checklist counts back from twelve, which is comfortable. Six is normal and four is doable — change the weeks in column B rather than deleting tasks, and the dates rearrange themselves. A compressed timeline puts several things in one week, and you want to see that rather than discover it.

WHY THE GREY CELLS ARE LOCKED Every calculated cell is protected, because the fastest way to break a shared checklist is for one person to overwrite a formula and nobody to notice for a month. Type in the yellow cells. No password is set — you can unlock any sheet if you want to.

INSTANT DOWNLOAD Delivered the moment you buy. Nothing ships, and nothing is printed for you — this is a spreadsheet, and the whole point is that it does arithmetic paper cannot.

Made by a two-person shop. Questions get a real answer at [email protected].

AI DISCLOSURE The spreadsheet’s structure, formulas and wording were designed and built with the help of AI tools, then tested and checked by a person before listing. The cover and preview images are generated graphics, not photographs.