Digital invitation etiquette for a Halloween garage dinner

Your neighbor swears he'll bring a chair, and you already know it's the kitchen stool with the wobbly leg. Someone else is on the fourth salad. The garage is swept, the pumpkins are lined up on the step, and the only thing still moving is a group chat with forty replies in it. A digital invitation for a Halloween dinner with neighbors in a decorated garage settles this before the first doorbell — you can pick a design from the collection and send it today.

Rules on a paper card end up under a takeaway menu. Rules on a link sit in the same place everyone opens to check the time, the address and what to bring. Here's what to write, and where.

The digital invitation sets the garage rules before the first doorbell

Put the house rules on the cover line, where nobody can miss them. "Bring a folding chair and write your name on the back" is a different request from "bring a chair", and only one of them ends with three people standing. Split the food by stairwell too, so the table doesn't end up with six identical salads. Time it with a margin: doors at 8:15, dinner at 8:30, so the first guests aren't left waiting between cobwebs.

• A folding chair with your name on the back, so it goes home with you
• A dish to share: savory if you're in number 3, sweet if you're in number 5
• Flat shoes — the garage floor is concrete and it's cold after ten
• Your own glass, if drinking out of plastic isn't your thing

How to create digital invitations for a garage dinner without forty messages

A group chat with forty crossed replies reads badly and is forgotten faster. The RSVP list inside the invitation stays in order, with first and last names on it. Set the two questions that actually decide the evening — "chair or bench?" and "savory or sweet?" — in the confirmation form, and you stop counting plates in your head at midnight.

Guests open the link in the phone browser, install nothing, and answer from the landing in about ten seconds. If a dish changes or dinner slips half an hour, you edit the invitation and the link stays the same: everyone sees the updated version the next time they open it. No reprints, no second message to the group, no "sorry, did we say 8:30 or 9?"

Write the rules once, in the same place everyone opens, and the group chat goes quiet.

Say the awkward things: three steps, moving cars, cold concrete

One line — "three steps before the door, flat shoes" — and nobody arrives in heels carrying a tray. The cars leave the garage at seven, so those spaces are free for whoever turns up with boxes; say it and people plan around it. "It's cold in there, bring a layer" keeps half the table from wearing coats all evening. Then the rest writes itself: what you eat, what you bring, when the door opens. Choose a design, drop in your own lines and up to six photos, and send the link to the block. It's 29.99 EUR, one payment and no subscription, and you can set the invitation up in English, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese or German if a few neighbors need it.