Get final Joy meal counts and dietary notes for the caterer

1. Open Guest List from the Joy Event Dashboard. Each RSVP question has its own column, so meal choice sits next to attendance and any extra question, such as dietary needs, is further right.
2. Click Export All Guests in the Joy Guest List toolbar, or tick guests and click Export Selection, then open the CSV in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers.
3. Filter the sheet to attending guests, count each meal by hand and copy the free-text dietary answers into a separate list for the kitchen.
4. In the Joy Seating Chart, the download icon gives a Meal counts CSV per table, but the Seating Chart is a one-time purchase per event.
5. A late change in the Joy Guest List makes the spreadsheet stale, and a guest with no meal answer or an unnamed plus-one is easy to miss in the totals.

RSVPs are closed. Give the caterer the number of each meal for everyone attending the reception, plus a list of dietary notes by guest name, and flag anyone with no meal answer.

1. 01

   Confirm the list is closed

   The agent starts with get_rsvp_summary. If guests are still pending, it names them and asks whether to leave them out or wait, instead of handing the caterer a number that will move.

2. 02

   Take only the right guests

   list_guests with attending, page by page, gives the people who said yes. For a wedding with several events it narrows to the tag you name, such as Reception, so rehearsal-only guests do not inflate the count.

3. 03

   Chase the holes in the data

   Attending guests with an empty meal answer and plus-ones that still have no name are pulled out. get_guest reads the full answer set for those few, since a dietary note sometimes sits in a free-text question instead of the meal column.

4. 04

   Write it the way kitchens read it

   The report puts dish totals first, kids' meals included, then a short list of names with their allergy or note. If the dish totals do not add up to the attending count, the agent says by how much and why.

5. 05

   Send only the changes later

   When you ask again after a late reply, the agent compares with the last report and lists what moved, so the caterer gets "one more fish, one vegetarian fewer" instead of a new full sheet.

Reception, RSVPs closed May 15: 112 attending, 0 pending.
Beef 46, Fish 38, Vegetarian 22, Kids' pasta 6 (total 112).
Dietary notes: Ana Lopez no nuts; Jonas Berg celiac; Priya Shah vegan, chose Vegetarian.
No meal answer: Luis Lopez and 1 unnamed guest of Kai Moreno.
Change since May 16: Ella Fox now attending (Fish).

• Joy asks its default meal question only to guests who answer that they are attending, so declined guests never carry a meal choice.
• Joy recommends adding a kids' meal as an answer on the meal question rather than as a separate question, so children land in the same column.
• A question added in Joy after guests have replied does not notify them, so a dietary question added late stays blank until you message those guests.
• The Joy Seating Chart download gives three files: Meal counts (CSV) per table, Table assignments (CSV) for the caterer and a Floor Plan (PDF) for the venue.

Every tool here only reads, so it can run on a schedule from n8n, Make, Zapier or cron without waiting for your OK.

Sources: Joy Help: view RSVP responses · Joy Help: customize your RSVP questions · Joy Help: seating chart · Joy Help: viewing your RSVP counts

curl https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/joy/list_guests \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"event_id":"evt_8KQ2mZ","rsvp":"attending","tag":"Reception","limit":500}'

{
  "guests": [
    {
      "guest_id": "g_4d21",
      "first_name": "Ana",
      "last_name": "Lopez",
      "email": "ana@example.com",
      "party": "Lopez",
      "tags": [
        "friends"
      ],
      "rsvp": "attending",
      "answers": {
        "Meal choice": "Vegetarian"
      }
    },
    {
      "guest_id": "g_4d22",
      "first_name": "Luis",
      "last_name": "Lopez",
      "email": null,
      "party": "Lopez",
      "tags": [
        "friends"
      ],
      "rsvp": "attending",
      "answers": {
        "Meal choice": "Fish"
      }
    }
  ],
  "next_cursor": null
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the tool is joy_list_guests. Example data.

• Sync your Joy guest list from a spreadsheet
• Send Joy RSVP reminders to guests who have not replied
• Send Joy thank-you notes for registry gifts
• Joy API and MCP server: every tool
• All use cases