The same evening, at every size it could be.

Guest count is the single number that moves the most. It decides how many tables, how much clear exit width, how many bar positions, how long a service pass takes, and whether one oven is a kitchen or a bottleneck. What it does not change is the shape of the problem. A dinner for eight and a gala for four hundred both need somebody to have decided where people put their coats. These pieces work through the formats one size at a time and say plainly which decisions scale, which break, and which were never about the number at all.