Digital invitation for wedding guests who don't speak Spanish

Your wedding is in Seville in June and half the list doesn't read Spanish. Your cousin in Frankfurt has the date in his calendar, your friends from Dublin have booked flights, and your aunts will read every word in Spanish because that is what they speak. Try fitting that into one email. That is the ordinary problem of a wedding with guests who don't speak Spanish, and it is what a digital invitation is for: one link, the same date and time for everyone, read in the language each guest actually speaks. You can pick a design from the catalogue and send it today.

And it isn't a translation you do once and forget. The invitation is a web page of its own, not a PDF or an image. It opens in the phone browser, nobody installs anything, and guests reply from that same screen.

A digital invitation for wedding guests who don't speak Spanish

Send The Joy runs in seven languages: Spanish, English, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese and German. The content of the invitation is set per language as well. Same date, same time, same cover, only the words change. The family table in Seville opens the Spanish version, the friends from Dublin open the English one, and both use the same link.

• Set the cover text in Spanish for the family in Seville and in English for the friends from Dublin: one link for everybody.
• Review the five text fields in each language before publishing: label, names, date, phrase and place.
• Write the place with the city in brackets, like 'Iglesia de Santa María (Seville)', so it reads well in any language.
• Send it once and each guest opens it in their own browser, on their own phone, with nothing to install.

The names don't translate. The time does.

Leave proper nouns where they are. The church, the restaurant, the street and the city stay untouched: 'Iglesia de Santa María (Seville)' reads fine in German, English or Italian. What you do translate is everything around them, the labels like 'Ceremony', 'Dinner' or 'Last dance'.

Write the time so nobody can misread it. 18:30, not 'late afternoon'. Give the full date with the day of the week, because someone is reading it 2,000 kilometres away. If your guests speak three languages, pick one as the main version and keep the others complete, and never mix two languages into the same sentence.

Same invitation, same link, seven possible languages. The only thing that changes from one table to another is the language they read it in.

RSVP stops being a WhatsApp puzzle

Confirmations arrive inside the invitation, in one ordered list. You set the questions in the confirmation form, so each reply comes back with the name and the detail you asked for. No chasing answers through three WhatsApp threads in three languages, and no guessing what 'we'll probably make it, I think' was supposed to mean.

Why a digital invitation fits this wedding

It is a web page for your event, shared with a link, a QR code or a message. €29.99 per invitation, paid once, no subscription, for a list spread over several countries and time zones. Photos work the same way: up to six of your own, you mark which one is the cover, and you can swap any of them later.

Being straight with you: it prints and posts nothing. If someone wants a copy to frame, the sensible plan is the link for everyone plus a few printed copies for the people who will keep them.

Try it before you send anything: in test mode you edit the cover without paying, and buying unlocks every scene of the invitation. Read it in both your languages, check the date and the place once more, and when it sounds like your wedding, publish with one button. Your invitation is then ready for Dublin, Frankfurt and Seville at the same time.