Digital invitation: avoid these LGBTQ+ wedding mistakes

You've got the draft open on your phone and it looks right: the photo, the date, the map. Then you reach the names. The template asks for a title and one single line, so you leave the 'Mr and Mrs' where it sits and type both names into the same field. Something goes flat. Most LGBTQ+ wedding invitation mistakes happen exactly there, in the fields nobody re-reads, not in the design. You can skip them: choose a design from the catalogue, set it up and send a digital invitation today, before any of this gets baked in.

The three places where an invitation turns into a form are the names, the pronouns and the menu. Below is what usually goes wrong in each one and what to write instead. It takes ten minutes, and it is far easier on a page you can still edit than on card stock you have already paid for.

LGBTQ+ wedding invitation mistakes start with the name

The first mistake is filling the field with the name on your ID. If you're Alex at work and Carol at home, the invitation says Alex and Carol, not Alexander and Caroline. The second is the label sitting above them: 'Mr and Mrs' is still in half the templates, and on two men or two women it reads like a typo someone forgot to fix. Swap it for 'The grooms', 'The brides', or just your two names with nothing in front of them. The third is the single line: when both names share one row, one of them always ends up behind, smaller or cut off. One field per piece of information — label, name A, name B — stops that before it starts.

• Both names written the way you're actually called, not the way they appear on your ID.
• A label that works for any couple: 'The grooms', 'The brides', or your two names with nothing in front.
• Pronouns asked of everyone or of nobody — never only of the guest who 'looks like' they need it.
• Someone who isn't coming opens the link on their phone and tells you what they understood.

Pronouns: what a digital invitation can't guess

Ask only the guest who doesn't seem to fit and you have pointed at them in front of the whole list. If you're asking, ask everyone: the grandmother, the colleague, the friend you've known since school. And don't work the pronoun out from the name. Andrea can be he, she or they, and a header that opens with 'dear family' lands badly when it's wrong.

In the confirmation form, one open question does more than two closed boxes: 'How shall we call you?' or 'Anything we should know about how we address you?' Checkboxes leave half your list out, and people notice which box they were handed.

An invitation works when the guest finds themselves in it on the first line: name, pronoun, plate.

The menu that doesn't explain itself

'Gents' menu, ladies' menu' doesn't hold up at any wedding. Name the dishes instead: dinner menu, plant-based option, gluten-free option. If there's a table for the kids, call it the kids' menu — there are adults who eat little, and families with three children of different ages who don't want the same plate. The other classic is the moving target: times and menu written into the invitation, then changed by WhatsApp two weeks out. One updated text beats twenty messages, and nobody has to scroll back to work out which version was true.

How to create a digital invitation that skips the form

Digital invitations here are pages, not files: guests open the link in a browser, install nothing and answer from their phone. You write into separate fields — label, names, date, phrase, place — each with a character counter, and you see the result as you type without reloading. That's what keeps a long name from breaking the cover. You can add up to six of your own photos, mark which one is the cover and swap any of them later. The content can also be set per language, handy if you have family in Berlin or São Paulo, and the confirmations arrive inside the same invitation, in an ordered list, with the questions you set up.

Before you send the link, open it on your phone as if you were the aunt who lives abroad. If she understands the names, the pronouns and the menu, the invitation is ready. One digital invitation costs €29.99, you pay once, you can still edit it after it's out, and the RSVPs land on the same page.