Wedding invitations for guests with reduced mobility

Your aunt opens the link on a five-inch phone, brightness at half, standing outside the shop in the sun. She can read the names. She can't read the time. Wedding invitations for guests with reduced mobility usually fail here, on the screen, long before anyone reaches the venue door.

A printed card gets bigger when you hold it closer. A link gets bigger when you pinch the screen. That's the whole difference, and it's the reason a digital invitation is easier to make accessible than paper. It's a web page, not a PDF, so guests open it in whatever browser is already on the phone in their pocket. Nothing to install. And because you can still edit it after you send it, the text can carry the practical facts a photograph never will.

Wedding invitations for guests with reduced mobility start at the link

A photograph of the room is lovely and useless for this. It doesn't say whether there are steps at the entrance, where the accessible bathroom is, or how far the car park sits from the door. Those need writing down as plain facts, in the same field as the venue name, not saved for a phone call the week before. Add one more line while you're there: the time people can start heading home while it's still light, for anyone who won't drive after dark.

• Where you get in without steps, and how far the car park is from that door
• Whether there's a lift up to the room, and whether the accessible bathroom is on the same floor
• What happens between the ceremony and dinner: same building, or a drive
• One name and one phone number for questions in the week before the wedding

Fewer words, bigger type

The editor counts characters as you type. 'Ceremony, 12:30' lands in one glance. 'The ceremony will commence at half past twelve in the afternoon' makes people read twice and then ring someone to check.

The venue field is where a plain sentence goes: 'Step-free access through the side door, next to the car park.' Keep the pretty line and the practical fact apart. The line moves people. The fact gets them in.

An invitation only works if every guest can read it, understand it and reply. Everything else is decoration.

The RSVP nobody has to phone in

Guests confirm inside the invitation itself, on their own phone, without installing anything. Someone who's home all day can answer at eleven at night from the sofa. Replies land in one ordered list, so if your 92-year-old grandmother says yes, you see it in one pass instead of scrolling forty WhatsApp messages. Set only the questions you'll use: if an answer won't change anything about the day, it's clutter.

Moving the party doesn't cost 120 envelopes

The restaurant moves dinner downstairs because upstairs is stairs only. You edit the text, the link stays the same, and nobody gets a second message. Time, place, map, dress code, that one line about the side door: change any of it and guests see the new version the next time they open the link.

If someone wants paper for the album, the sensible combination is a link for everyone and a handful of printed copies for whoever will keep them. Say that when you send it: guests need a phone, a tablet or a computer with a connection, and the link opens in any browser. A digital invitation at €29.99, one-time payment, lets you adjust texts, time and place until the last day without resending anything to anyone.