Marseille Birthday Invitations: 5 Mistakes to Avoid

Two messages go out for the same birthday in Marseille and they don't say the same thing. It's the usual way birthday invitations in Marseille break, and it isn't the design. It's the instructions, spread over three chats and one phone call. One message says come for lunch. The other says come round at six. By 1pm the grandparents are at the table and the friends are still at the beach. Nobody got it wrong.

Most birthday invitations in Marseille don't fail because of the design. They fail on five small things: no time on them, confirmations counted in five places, a link buried under stickers, one language for a table that speaks three, and the practical details left out. None of them is hard to fix. Each one costs you a guest who turns up at the wrong hour, or a chair you didn't need.

Mistake 1: A Marseille birthday invitation with no time on it

A 'yes' in the group chat doesn't tell anyone whether it's lunch or dinner. Without a fixed hour, the family arrives at 1pm and the friends at 6pm, and both of them are right. Then the cake comes out twice. Three lines at the top of the invitation answer the question before it gets asked: date, start and finish, visible before anyone replies.

• Date written out: 'Saturday 14 June', not 'the 14th'.
• Start and finish time together, so people know how long they're staying.
• What it is: lunch, apero, or dinner after 8pm.
• The exact place, with the venue name.

Mistakes 2 and 3: five chats and a link that gets buried

If confirmations land in WhatsApp, Instagram, and a couple of phone calls, someone ends up counting 'I'm in' between stickers. Twelve confirmed in one list is a table. Seven here and five there is a table set for ten. Worse: when three people think they're keeping count, nobody knows the real number, and the chairs run out.

A PDF or a photo of the invitation in the chat has the same problem. Photos and questions push it up the thread, and the guest opens the wrong file. Change the time or the place, and a fixed design means resending everything, with some people still reading the old version for a week. A live link updates for everyone, with no reprints and no new messages. That's the point of a web page instead of a file.

One link, one list, one time. Everything else is follow-up work you didn't plan for.

Mistakes 4 and 5: one language, and the details left out

Your table in Marseille can mix French, Spanish, Italian and English, and a single version leaves someone out. A digital invitation can be set per language and opens in any browser, with no app to install. The rest is the details that scatter people: the map, the dress code, what to bring. Keep them in the same place as the RSVP, where the link can't disappear under a hundred messages. Try the design for free and publish your invitation for 29.99 EUR, paid once.