Inspiration
Digital invitation: how to write names correctly
A digital invitation puts every name on a screen your guests will read twice. Here's how to write them so they sound like people, not like a form
Send The Joy · October 15, 2026 · 3 min read
Two weeks before the wedding, Ana opens the link she sent to forty people and reads the first line: 'Ana García and Luis.' Luis has no surname up there. Nobody said anything, and Luis's brother still brought it up at dinner. Writing names on a digital invitation is the smallest job in the whole process and the first thing every guest reads. You can build and send yours today from the catalogue; the names are the part worth slowing down for.
There is no envelope to fix and no reprint, but there is a screen that forty people open on a Tuesday night. Here is how to fill each name field in Joy Studio so the invitation sounds like you two and not like a form.
How to write names on a digital invitation: two hosts, one format
The names field belongs to the people signing the invitation. The label above it — 'We're getting married', 'Thirty years of us' — belongs to the event. Keep those two separate and half the awkwardness disappears. The other half is consistency: whatever you do with one name, do with the other.
- Same format on both sides: 'Ana and Luis', never 'Ana García and Luis'. If one carries a surname, both carry a surname.
- Decide one rule for length — first names only, or first names plus surnames — and apply it to both hosts.
- Give the label to the event and the names field to the two people signing.
- The editor counts characters per field, so a long name that breaks the layout shows up in your preview, not on a guest's phone.
José Antonio isn't José: the name people recognise
Use the name that person signs a WhatsApp with. If everyone calls him Pepe, 'José Antonio' on the invitation sounds like a passport. It works the other way too: if she has always been Beatriz and never Bea, don't shorten her name to make the layout look tidy.
Accents and diacritics are not decoration. María is not Maria, Iñaki is not Inaki, and the screen renders both perfectly, so there is no reason to strip a name down to fit a template. If the two names are very different lengths — 'Ana' and 'María del Carmen' — pick one rule, like first names only, and apply it to both hosts.
Surnames: when they add something and when they get in the way
On the cover, first names. Surnames sit better in the footer or in the closing line, where they don't fight with the design. Two surnames only when they genuinely distinguish: a father and son with the same name, or two cousins called Marta. And 'and family' names nobody — if there are three children, there are three names, even on a smaller line underneath.
Read the names out loud before you publish. If they sound like a form and not like the person, change them.
Why digital invitations forgive a name you got wrong
The link never changes. If you wrote 'José' and it should have been 'José Antonio', open Joy Studio, edit the field, and anyone who clicks the link from then on sees the corrected version: no reprints, no envelopes, no second message. One payment of 29,99 EUR per digital invitation, no subscription, and it reaches the cousin in Toronto as easily as the neighbour downstairs. Pick a design, try it free in test mode, and publish once every name reads right.
