Digital invitation: what a wedding bus costs per seat

Sixty names on the list, a 55-seat coach, and a spreadsheet that has been open on the kitchen table since Tuesday. One extra couple and the bus is full. One cancellation and you're paying for an empty seat. That's the real price of a digital wedding invitation with a bus in the plan: it's a seat problem, not a menu problem. You can pick a design from the catalogue today, type in the departure time and send the link the same afternoon.

The invitation won't hire the coach or ring the people who haven't replied. What it does is hold the departure time, the pickup point and the deadline in one page that stays current, so the number you argued about at the kitchen table is the number your guests actually read.

Your wedding bus is priced per seat, not per guest

Coaches are quoted by the seat and by the hour, so every guest who says "maybe" costs you twice: once at the table, once on the tarmac. Before you close the number, split the list into three groups: the ones who live forty minutes away, the ones arriving by train at 18:10, and the ones staying overnight in the village. Only the first group needs a seat in both directions. A wedding invitation with a bus for guests is a different document from the one you'd send if everybody drove home.

• Departure and return times written as numbers: 17:30 and 00:45, not "in the afternoon".
• A pickup point you can see from the street: the pharmacy, the corner by the bar, the roundabout.
• The deadline for claiming a seat, with the day of the week included.
• How many seats there are, and who to message if you need to change yours.

How much does a digital invitation cost when the bus sets the timetable

One payment of 29,99 EUR per invitation, no subscription. Weigh that against eighty printed cards carrying a departure time you'll have to defend. The bus scene holds the exact pickup point — the corner of the square, not "the centre" — plus the time out, the time back and the deadline in type big enough to read on a phone in the back of a taxi.

Print eighty cards with a 17:30 departure and the coach moves to 18:00, and you're either reprinting or calling people one by one. Change the same detail on the link and it's already updated for whoever opens it that morning. Confirmations land in an ordered list inside the invitation, so you count seats at a glance instead of scrolling through five conversations. Most digital invitations stop at the address and the dress code; the bus needs its own scene, and the map, the timings and the closing line all get edited in the same place.

The bus leaves once. The invitation can be corrected right up to the moment the doors close.

What a digital invitation doesn't fix about the bus

It doesn't book the coach, count seats for you or chase the people who haven't answered; that's still a phone call. It doesn't print or post anything, and your guests need a phone, tablet or laptop with a connection to open it. What it does, for 29,99 EUR in a single payment, is keep the time, the pickup point and the deadline in one link that updates without a reprint. If the bus is already deciding your guest list, let the invitation carry the details — and update them yourself when the driver calls.