Weddings
Vegan menu in wedding invitations: announce it, don't ask
Five cousins will ask whether there will be anything vegan. One sentence in the invitation answers all of them, and you can change it later without resending the link.
Send The Joy · October 6, 2026 · 3 min read
It's a Tuesday evening, three weeks before the wedding, and your phone buzzes. 'Quick one — will there be anything vegan?' You answer. Twenty minutes later a second cousin asks the same thing. Then your aunt, who never uses the word vegan, asks for 'something without cheese, if that's possible'.
Three questions, three replies, and four more coming before the week is out. You don't need a form or a group chat for this. You need one sentence in the invitation, where everybody reads it at the same time.
Vegan menu in wedding invitations: announce it, don't ask
Instead of messaging each cousin one by one, write the line once: 'There will be a full vegan menu — starter, main and dessert.' Whoever needs it knows before they reply. Whoever doesn't can skip the sentence. The invitation isn't a form that collects dietary needs, which is exactly why this works: it states what's happening, once, for everyone. Add the drinks while you're there — 'wine, beer and soft drinks at the reception' — so a vegan guest can decide on the way whether to eat something first or wait for dinner.
- Say vegan, not special: 'Full vegan menu, with a dairy-free lemon tart for dessert.'
- One line, not a paragraph — the editor's character counter tells you when you've gone over.
- Put the menu note in the dinner scene, next to the time and the place.
- For the guest who doesn't read invitations on a phone, a few printed copies with the same sentence written on them by hand.
Write vegan, don't hint at it
'Special menu' tells a guest nothing, because every kitchen reads it differently. Write vegan and land the dish: 'chickpea and pumpkin curry, dairy-free chocolate cake'. The dish convinces; the label doesn't.
And watch the phrase that gets misread the most — a 'vegetarian option' isn't vegan, since it usually comes with cheese, egg or butter. Mention the dessert too, not only the main. Dessert is the course that gets forgotten, and it's the one that produces a question in the middle of dinner.
Put the line in the dinner scene
Place it in the scene where dinner's time and place appear, not tucked at the foot of the page. If a guest doesn't see it, the question comes back to your phone. Keep it inside one line: 'Full vegan menu, dessert included' fits; a five-line paragraph gets skimmed and skipped. And split the details — dress code up with the names and the date, menu note beside dinner. Two details in two places, nothing left to explain.
One line about the vegan menu answers the question you would otherwise answer ten times.
If the catering changes, you don't reprint anything
Two weeks before the wedding the chef swaps the vegan dessert because it contains nuts. You edit that one sentence and the link stays the same. Nobody gets a second message, nobody gets a new envelope. Time, place, map, dress code and menu note can all change after the invitation has gone out, and a guest who opens the link on Friday reads Friday's version. Eighty printed cards already in a drawer can't do that.
Before you call each guest one by one, write the sentence and put it where everyone will read it. Pick a design, type the vegan note into the dinner scene and publish with one button: €29.99, paid once, no subscription. You can try a design for free before you decide, guests open the link in any browser without installing anything, and if someone in the family still keeps paper, a few printed copies with the same line do the job.
