Chinese New Year invitations in London: coordinate your group

Three days before Chinese New Year, your London dinner is still a group chat with forty-one unread messages. Two people think you're eating at seven. One is booking a table for six. Someone already ate at home because nobody wrote the word 'dumplings' anywhere. This is how most Chinese New Year invitations in London go wrong: the plan is fine, the information is scattered.

The date moves every year, the group lives across five boroughs, and the evening only works if everyone reads the same thing. Sort out four things early and the rest takes care of itself.

Chinese New Year invitations in London start with one date

Chinese New Year falls on a different date each year, so the first decision is yours: the eve for dinner at home, or the weekend if you're heading out with the group. If you're chaining a restaurant and the street celebrations, leave a full hour in between — central London funnels into the same few streets at the same time and the Tube gets tight. Then write the time as a number. 19:30, not 'in the evening'. That one line kills half the questions before they're asked.

• Pick the day and put the exact hour in writing: 19:30, not 'in the evening'.
• Leave an hour between a restaurant booking and the street celebrations, so nobody is sprinting for a train.
• Say what kind of evening it is — home dinner, restaurant table or a long shared banquet — so people know how to dress and how far they're travelling.
• Put the date, time and place inside the invitation itself, not only in a message that scrolls away by Tuesday.

Red, gold and the menu, decided before you invite anyone

Red and gold carry the celebration, but nobody needs a costume. Ask for one red or gold detail — a scarf, a shirt, a pair of earrings — and the photos at the toast look like an occasion rather than a normal Thursday. It also gives people something to do instead of asking what to wear.

Name the food before anyone accepts. Dumplings at yours, a set banquet, a long table you all share: write it down and nobody turns up full. Do the same with the money. Who pays for the set menu, who brings the cake, who's on drinks. Unwritten money turns into private messages, and that's where a plan gets awkward.

A Chinese New Year dinner runs on three facts: the date, the table and who's paying. Put all three in one link and the group chat goes quiet.

One meeting point, not a neighbourhood

Write the exact spot — restaurant name, which Tube exit, street number. 'See you around Chinatown' at eight o'clock only produces missed calls. Two or three of your own photos help as well: the laid table, the lanterns, last year's dinner. The invitation stops looking like another text message. And if the group doesn't share one language, set the invitation text per language, so nobody is translating for the table at six in the evening.

Where a digital invitation fits a Chinese New Year party

For €29.99, one payment and no subscription, you get a web page for your event. Not a PDF, not an image that disappears under memes. Guests install nothing: they open the link in their phone's browser and answer from there. Confirmations land in one ordered list inside the invitation, and you choose the RSVP questions.

You can edit it after sending and the link doesn't change, so a new time or a new address doesn't mean forty new messages. It's still digital, so be straight about paper: send the link to everyone and print a few copies for the people who'll actually keep one. Guests need a phone, tablet or laptop with a connection.

Pick a design, try it free and drop the link in the group chat before the questions start. A Chinese New Year dinner in London takes an afternoon to organise, not a hundred messages.