First Communion Invitations: Set the Headcount First

Two sheets of paper on the kitchen table, two different handwritings, and the same cousin on both. Your mother wrote one list, your mother-in-law wrote the other, and between them there are 74 names. Nobody has called the parish office yet to ask how many people the church actually holds. That's the point where most first communion invitations get ordered too early.

Turn the order around and the planning gets simple. Seating first, names second, restaurant third, invitation last. Get it wrong and you end up making the one call nobody wants to make: ringing a guest to say there's no room.

Count the Church Seats Before You Book the Restaurant

Call the parish office and ask one question: how many people sit comfortably in the pews on the day of the mass? In plenty of parishes the first communion mass shares the church with another service, so the space you really get is smaller than the building looks. Once you have the number, choose the restaurant to fit it. If 60 people fit in the church and 90 fit in the dining room, your list is 60. The menu doesn't set the headcount. The pews do.

• Ask the parish office for the real number of seats on the day of the mass, not the capacity of the building on a quiet weekday.
• Count the people who won't get a seat: small siblings, the person from next door who turns up, the ones who arrive late and watch from the door.
• Let the smaller venue set your number. If the church holds 60 and the restaurant holds 90, you're planning for 60.
• Keep five or six places free for late confirmations and for anyone who comes without answering.

Write the Guest List in Three Columns, Not in One Pass

Column one: the people who have to be there — grandparents, godparents if your child has them, the catechist who prepared him all year, the aunts and uncles who've come to everything since he was born. Column two: the people you want there — his classmates, his cousins, the family friends you see every summer. Column three: everyone who depends on space. That column waits. If columns one and two already add up to more than the church holds, don't open column three at all.

Then put the papers together. If both families keep their own list, the same name lands on it twice and one household ends up with two invitations. Copy everything onto one sheet sorted by last name, and tick a box next to each name once it's sent, so you can see at a glance who's missing without asking anybody. Children count as people for the restaurant and not for the church: they take a chair at the table and sit on a lap during the mass.

Pews first, plates second. The number that fits in the church is the number that decides the list.

First Communion Invitations You Can Edit After You Send Them

Once the list is closed and the headcount is clear, the only job left is sending it — and that's where a digital invitation does the work. It's a web page for your child's communion, not a PDF: you share a link, a QR code or a message, and guests open it in the browser on their phone without installing anything. The confirmations arrive inside the invitation, in one ordered list, with the RSVP questions you set, so you're not chasing replies across three chat threads. If the mass moves from 12:00 to 13:00 because the priest merges two services, or the dress code is settled in the last week and someone asks whether the children wear jackets or shorts, you edit the invitation and the link stays the same — nothing to reopen, nothing to reprint, no second round of envelopes. It costs 29,99 EUR per invitation, a one-time payment with no subscription, and it includes up to six of your own photos and music. If part of the family is in France, Italy or Portugal, the content can be set per language so each branch reads it in theirs. And if the grandparents want something in their hands, combine: the link for everyone, a few printed copies for whoever will keep them.