When to send a digital invitation: couples' Halloween dinner

Ten past eleven on the 30th. The restaurant's line is engaged, your partner asks for the third time what time you're eating, and the table you booked three weeks ago exists only in your head. That's the whole answer to when to send Halloween invitations for a couples' dinner: early enough that nobody has to ask. A digital invitation does it in one message, and you can build and send yours today from the catalogue.

Ten days is the window. Book the table, send the link on day seven, and by the 31st the only decision left is who rings the bell first.

When to send Halloween invitations for a couples' dinner

Start ten days out. Ring the restaurant and ask two things: whether there's a special Halloween menu and what time the kitchen closes, because plenty of kitchens cut service short on the 31st. Once the table is confirmed you have a time to put on the invitation, and that time is the whole point.

• Book the table on day 10 and ask what time the kitchen closes on the 31st.
• Send the invitation on day 7 with 9pm fixed and "see you under the full moon" in the cover text field.
• Check the confirmation list on day 28 and write only to whoever hasn't answered.
• Have the address and the meeting point ready before you suggest a drink on the terrace first.

How to create a digital invitation for the night, day by day

One WhatsApp message on day seven — "table's booked, here's the dinner" — with the link inside does more than fourteen scattered messages over two weeks. The restaurant name, the address and 9pm go in their own fields; your guest opens the link on the way there, not when the notification lands.

On the 28th, open the confirmation list inside the invitation itself. If two couples are still missing, that's the day to write to them. Not the afternoon of the 31st with your costume half on.

The restaurant holds the table. The invitation holds the plan.

Digital invitations vs paper when the table moves to 9:30

Restaurants run late on the 31st. If yours pushes you to half past nine, you change the time in the editor and the link stays the same. Anyone who opens it, including the friend who checked it on Tuesday, sees the new version. Nothing to reprint, nothing to resend, nobody texting "wait, was it nine or nine thirty?".

The meeting point works the same way: if you decide to start on a terrace with lanterns and paper bats, you swap the address and the map and it's done. Add two or three photos from a previous Halloween and mark the one you like as the cover. Suddenly the invitation looks like your night instead of a poster.

What goes on the invitation for a dinner for two

Pick a dark design from the catalogue and leave the typography as it comes. Write a label only the two of you understand — "full moon dinner" works, so does the nickname nobody else uses. Time, restaurant, address. Guests open it on a phone, a tablet or a laptop with a connection, so your mum and the couple who live out of town see exactly the same thing.

If the table is booked, the only thing missing is the message that turns it into a plan. Create your digital invitation today, leave 9pm and the line "see you under the full moon" ready, and send it on day seven. And if someone in the family wants it on paper, keep one printed copy for them and give everyone else the link.