Digital invitation for a winter wedding: light at six

Five in the afternoon in Madrid and the light is already going. Half past three in Edinburgh and it has gone. A winter wedding runs on the clock: the ceremony, the walk from the car to the door, the twenty minutes you spend outside in a coat. A digital invitation holds all of that on one screen, and you can pick a design, type the hours in and send it today from the catalogue.

What follows is what to put on it, in the order that matters: the hour, the coat, the colours, and how to change any of it on 27 December without printing a single envelope.

Digital invitation for a winter wedding: the hour comes before the decoration

If your ceremony starts at 17:00 in Madrid or 16:30 in Edinburgh, the sun has already set. Put the hour big enough to read on a phone in the back of a taxi, and add one short line under it: it will be dark and cold when you leave. For the cover, choose an indoor photo with warm light — a table, a window with candles — and swap it whenever you like. In the editor you mark which photo is the cover and replace it without touching the link. Write the welcome line for someone reading it with their gloves half on.

• The hour in 24-hour format, plus one line saying it will be dark when you leave.
• A dress code in real words: long coat, shoes for a wet pavement, and whether anyone walks outside.
• The map for the venue and for the transfer, with the arrival time at each stop.
• Short RSVP questions: how many of you are coming, and whether you stay for dinner.

The coat belongs in the invitation: how to write a winter dress code

'Elegant' says nothing in January. 'Long coat, shoes that can take a wet pavement' saves someone a thin heel on frozen stone. If there's a transfer between the ceremony and dinner, put it in the same scene as the map, with the arrival time at each stop. Correcting the address or the map afterwards doesn't mean resending anything: the link shows the updated version.

There's one question you'll get twenty times on WhatsApp, so answer it in writing: say whether the marquee or the indoor room is heated. One line, and your phone goes quiet on the Thursday before.

Set the hour big, name the coat, and half the questions never reach your phone.

Winter colours that don't look like New Year's Eve

Fir green, midnight blue, burgundy and pearl grey hold up at a winter wedding. Gold with red glitter drifts into a New Year's Eve menu. If the venue already has wood, candles and raw linen, repeat that palette in the invitation: it sits next to the table instead of competing with it. Filter the collection by style, try a design for free by editing the cover, and unlock every scene when you buy.

Replies over Christmas, and changing the hour on 27 December

Answers land inside the invitation, in one ordered list, so you aren't rebuilding a guest list out of forty separate messages. Set the questions to what you actually need, short enough to answer in a taxi. Guests install nothing: they open the link in a browser and reply from a phone, a tablet or the laptop at work. If the banquet moves rooms because of a storm, you edit the invitation and the same link shows the new time and place.

When the hour, the coat and the palette are settled, try the design for free and publish: you share one link or a QR code and the replies arrive inside the invitation. Digital invitations cost 29,99 EUR in one payment — no subscription, and nothing to reprint when the plan changes. Your winter wedding ends up with an invitation that still reads well at six in the evening.