Digital invitation: a hen party of near-strangers

Eight women, three group chats and one bride. You booked the house, so you're the one sending the details. Half the list goes back to school with her, the other half knows her from work, and two of them have never spoken. A digital invitation sorts out the admin in an afternoon: you pick a design from the catalogue, fill it in and send the link today. What it can't do is guess. These are the mistakes that keep turning up when the guest list is a hen party (bachelorette, if you're planning from the US) of people who don't know each other.

None of them takes long to fix, and most are a line of text rather than a new design. Digital invitations give you one page everyone can open — the mistakes live in what you write on it. Start with the one that causes the most confusion.

Mistake 1: a digital invitation that doesn't say who's coming

A link that only shows a date, a time and a city leaves the work friend wondering whether the woman from the gym is hosting or just turning up. One line per group breaks the ice before the first message: «the ones from the master's», «Ana's team», «the village crowd». The cover is the first thing anyone sees, so put a photo of the hosts there and two lines explaining how the groups fit together. It gives the guest from your hometown and the one from the office something to talk about in the car.

• Name who's hosting, even if there are six of you. Every guest then knows who to ask.
• Add a line per group so nobody has to work out which part of her life they belong to.
• Skip «we're all getting together» with no context. It reads like a message meant for someone else.
• Put a real photo of the hosts on the cover instead of a stock image of balloons.

Mistake 2: a plan told in halves

«In the afternoon» is not a time. Write 6:30 pm, the exact address, the map and where people can park. The guest who has never been to that town arrives without calling anyone. A dress code works better when it's concrete: short dress, flat shoes, no heels for the dirt track. And put the budget in the invitation — «room and breakfast covered, dinner split between us» — before someone asks you in a private message.

Then there's the chat. Drop the link between eighty messages about costumes and half the group never opens it. Pin it, or send it once as a single message with the QR code. If the time changes later, edit the invitation: the same link shows the updated version, so there's nothing to repost. Confirmations arrive inside the invitation in one ordered list — who's in, who's out, who hasn't answered. That's the chasing part dealt with.

A hen party invitation doesn't have to be beautiful. It has to answer the three questions everyone asks before booking a train: who's going, what time, and what do I wear.

What a digital invitation for a hen party costs, and what it fixes

A digital invitation costs 29,99 EUR per invitation, one payment, no subscription. You can try it free first: edit the cover, see how the names look, and pay when you're happy — that unlocks every scene. Up to six of your own photos, music, and the RSVP questions you actually need, plus the option to set the content per language if someone is coming from abroad. If a paper person is in the group, the sensible version is both: the link for everyone and two or three printed copies for whoever keeps that sort of thing. Pick a design, fill it in and send it now — the plan will change at least once, and the link will keep up.