Digital invitation: what a Halloween dinner costs

The doorbell goes at eleven, the pumpkins are on the step, and your phone is stuck on a group chat with fourteen people and no answers. Saturday, one long table, and three messages asking whether you booked for nine or half past. Before you reply, run the two numbers: how much a Halloween digital invitation costs for a pumpkin dinner at a restaurant, and what the restaurant adds on top for handling your group. You can pick a design in the catalogue, personalise it with your own texts and photos, and send the link tonight.

One half of that sum is fixed. The other half moves with every chair you add, and it's the half nobody checks before saying yes to a table for twelve. Who's in, what they wear, what time the table is: those three answers are the whole invitation.

How much does a Halloween digital invitation cost for a pumpkin dinner?

Most of the money talk happens on the phone, in a hurry, with a menu in front of you. Ask three questions and the picture gets clear: what they want up front, how they charge for a group, and by when they need the final number.

• The deposit per head. Plenty of places want 10 or 20 EUR per person to block a long table on a Saturday. It comes off the bill later, but your money sits there for three weeks.
• The group fee. Ask whether it's flat, per person or a percentage of the set menu. It swings a lot between a table of eight and a table of twenty.
• The headcount. That's the number they'll ask for on the phone, and the one that changes every time someone's cousin decides to come.
• Your hours. Calling to go from twelve to fourteen, repeating the address to the person who didn't read the message, resending the time because someone thought it was Friday.

What's inside a digital invitation for 29.99 EUR

You pay once and there's no subscription. What you get is a web page for your dinner, not a PDF or an image that vanishes into someone's camera roll. The invitation is built from chained scenes you fill with your own words and up to six of your own photos. You can add music and write your own RSVP questions in the browser editor. Nobody installs an app: guests open the link on a phone, tap yes or no, and the replies arrive in one ordered list inside the invitation.

The same link keeps working after you send it. If the restaurant moves you from 9pm to 9.30pm, or the table ends up in the back room instead of the terrace, you change it and the link stays put. No reprints, no thirty separate messages. The dress code line, the map, the sentence on the cover: all editable, all live.

Two lines decide a Halloween dinner: what the invitation costs once, and what the restaurant charges for every chair.

Why digital invitations suit a pumpkin dinner

Paper can't tell anyone that the table moved to 9.30pm. A link can, and it does it while you're still in the taxi with a pumpkin under your arm. Write the day, the hour, the restaurant and how many of you there are once, then let the confirmations gather in one place before you call to lock the number. If someone in the group wants something to keep, print a few copies for them and leave the link for everyone else. Start with the digital invitation tonight: the pumpkins can wait on the step.