Wedding invitation countdown: what to send and when

Your cousin messages the family group chat at eleven at night: "Is it the 12th or the 13th?" You answered that on Tuesday. You answer again. Two days later somebody else asks what time the ceremony starts, and you realise you've now typed the same three facts four times.

That's what a wedding invitation countdown is for. Six months isn't a fussy rule: it's roughly the notice a guest needs to look at flights, compare dates and ask for time off work. The date, the venue and the wording can be settled long before the table plan, and a link can be corrected afterwards. So there's no reason to sit on it.

The wedding invitation countdown starts six months out

If the venue and the day are locked, the link can go out now. It isn't a PDF and it isn't a screenshot: it's a web page that opens on any phone, with nothing to install, and guests confirm from that same page. Sending early won't make anyone reply sooner. It does stop the "wait, was it Saturday?" thread before it starts.

• Get five fields right and publish: label, names, date, phrase, venue. That's what guests actually check.
• Open the link on someone else's phone, on mobile data, before you send it to anyone else.
• People travelling need the date first. Timings and details can follow later.
• Leave it too late and guests are choosing between your wedding and leave they've already booked.

The countdown gets messy when RSVPs live outside the invitation

When confirmation sits inside the invitation, replies arrive as one ordered list. You're not rebuilding a chat full of separate "we're in" messages, and you're not guessing who's coming to the ceremony and skipping the dinner. The form questions are yours to set: keep the ones you'll actually read and delete the rest.

It also gives you one answer to repeat. When someone asks what time it starts, you send the link they already have. No new screenshot, no retyping the address, no scrolling back through the thread.

One link that stays current beats forty replies you have to piece together by hand.

Changing the time shouldn't cost you a reprint

Move the time because the caterer asked, swap the venue, fix the map pin, change the dress code or rewrite the phrase: the link stays the same and every guest sees the updated version. No envelopes, no reprints, no texting thirty people one by one with a correction.

The last two weeks: polish, don't start over

This is when you swap the cover photo for one of the venue, or change the phrase for something that sounds like the two of you. You can choose which photo opens the invitation and replace any of them later, with up to six of your own. Read every scene the way a guest would — threshold, arch, long dinner, last dance — and open the whole thing on a phone that isn't yours. If some guests read in another language, the invitation content can be set per language, so your aunt in Lyon opens the same thing in French. And if someone keeps paper, the sensible mix is a link for everyone plus a few printed copies for the people who'll file them away.

If your date and your venue are settled, there's no reason to wait for a perfect design. Start in test mode, edit the cover for free, and unlock every scene when you're happy with it. It's 29.99 EUR, paid once, and the link stays the same even if you change something in March.