Digital invitation for a hen party: dress code that works

It's Friday night. Someone drops 'cocktail, comfy heels' into the hen party chat — bachelorette, if your group lives in the States — and by Sunday two people are asking again whether jeans are fine. A digital invitation ends that before it starts: you pick a design, write the hen party dress code into its own field next to the date and the venue, and send one link. You can have it ready today, straight from the catalogue.

The chat isn't the problem. The problem is that a chat moves. New people join, someone changes the time, the garden plan becomes a room with carpet, and the one line everybody needs is buried under two days of messages.

The dress code goes on the digital invitation, not in the group chat

Send the code as a one-off message and whoever joins late never sees it. Five days later someone asks again about smart casual versus jeans, and you type the same answer for the fourth time. On the invitation page the dress code gets its own label, sitting next to the date and the address, so nobody has to scroll through three days of conversation to find it.

• The colour that's in and the colour that's out: 'black, and nothing white'.
• The real footwear for the venue: grass, cobbles, stairs or carpet.
• Two clear examples in one line: 'plain midi dress' or 'shirt and dark trousers'.
• A photo of the venue or of the mood, so the colour never gets argued about in the chat.

Elegant means nothing: how to write a hen party dress code

'Elegant' reads differently in every head, and it says nothing about what to pack. Write the result, not the label: 'long dresses, solid colours, no prints', or 'dark jeans and a shirt'. If the code is a colour — everyone in white, everyone in black — say it in one line and move on.

Then add a photo of the venue. A group dressed all in black in a dark room disappears in every picture, and that's the one thing nobody can fix afterwards. Put footwear on the same line as the outfit: grass, cobbles, stairs or a long walk from the car park change the plan from stilettos to flat sandals. And keep a line for whoever won't follow any of it: 'come as you are, just come.'

A dress code doesn't fail because people disagree with it. It fails because it's buried somewhere nobody scrolls back to.

Change the dress code ten days out: edit the link, don't reprint

Moving from 'garden, heels' to 'carpet, flat shoes' on paper means messaging everyone one by one and hoping each of them reads it. Here you edit the dress code text and the link stays the same: anyone who opens it sees the current version, and the same goes for the time, the map or the closing line. Guests open the link in a mobile browser, with no app to install. RSVPs arrive inside the invitation in one ordered list, so you can see who's coming without chasing anyone.

Pick a design, test the cover for free, and write the dress code where people will actually read it: on the page, next to the date. Digital invitations also give your group chat one link to point at instead of a hundred replies. And if a few guests want paper, print a handful for the ones who'll keep it.