Digital invitation: what should a wedding invitation include?

Your phone buzzes at ten on a Tuesday night. A cousin wants to know what time the meal starts. Your digital invitation is a photo somewhere up in the chat: the date, a nice phrase, no meal time. You type the answer, send it, and get the same question again on Thursday.

That is the reason to build a page instead of sending an image. It opens in a browser, no app needed, and you can still fix it after it goes out. Pick a design, fill it in and share the link today. Below, the short answer to one question: what should a wedding invitation include?

What should a wedding invitation include: seven details in eight seconds

Guests read in a fixed order: who is getting married, which day, where, the time of the ceremony, the time of the meal, the dress code and how to reply. Miss one and the phone comes out. A line that works looks like this: 'Marta and Luis · Saturday 14 June · 13:00 ceremony, 14:30 lunch · The Old Mill · cocktail dress · confirm here'. Seven blocks, nothing left to ask.

• Full names of both of you, no initials, before any nice sentence. 'M & L' makes people guess.
• The date with weekday and year, then both times in the same format: ceremony and meal.
• The exact name of the venue plus a link or button that opens the map in one tap.
• A dress code in words a guest can act on, and one confirm button with a reply deadline.

The meal time is the detail your digital invitation forgets

Almost every invitation gives the ceremony time. Few say when people sit down to eat. The guest who is only coming to the meal, or driving in from another city, plans the trip around that number. Without it they message you on Friday night, when you have other things to do.

Write two separate times, 13:00 and 14:30, not 'after the ceremony'. If the meal happens in another room or another building, put the room or address next to the second time, even when it is the same estate.

If a guest has to send a message to find out when they eat, the invitation is missing a field, not a sentence.

The map and the dress code weigh more than the typeface

A button that opens the map saves twenty messages. 'Is it the same place as Ana's wedding?' stops being a question when the pin is one tap away. The dress code needs words people can follow: cocktail dress, olive green for family, comfortable shoes because the garden is gravel. 'Elegant' tells nobody anything. Check the date, the two times and the venue three times, and keep them in their own fields instead of hiding them inside a decorative phrase. A wrong year is not fixed by a lovely line.

How to create digital invitations for a wedding that stays right

One link works for everyone. Guests confirm inside the invitation and the answers arrive in a single list, so you are not collecting replies from five different chats. You can edit after sending: a new time, a new map, a new dress code, and the link stays exactly the same. Nothing has to be sent out again. The limits are worth saying: it is digital, so your guests need a phone, a tablet or a computer with a connection. If someone in the family wants paper, the sensible mix is a link for everyone and a few printed copies for whoever will keep one in a drawer. Paper cannot be updated, though. Change the meal time and you reprint, re-stuff the envelopes and start again.

Open a design, write the seven details, put the two times in their own fields and share the link. Try a design for free first, then buy it once for 29.99 EUR and the full invitation unlocks.