Wedding invitations on WhatsApp, done well

Printed, digital, or both

It does not have to be one or the other. Many couples send the invitation on WhatsApp to nearly everyone, and print a few cards for the people who will keep one: grandparents, the pastor, the elders who led the roora.

• A printed card is beautiful and it is kept. It is also slow, it costs money for every guest, and a mistake on it stays a mistake.
• A WhatsApp invitation arrives at once and costs nothing to send. If the time or the venue changes, everyone sees the new details, and the replies come back to one place.

What a good one is made of

Three things, sent together.

• A card. A picture that looks like an invitation, with your names, the date and the place, sharp enough to read on a small screen.
• A short message. Who is getting married, when and where, in two or three lines. Our guide to invitation wording has one you can copy.
• One link. The full details, the directions and the reply all live behind it.

The link matters most. A picture cannot be changed once people have forwarded it, and old versions keep going round. A link always opens the latest details.

Four ways to send it

• One by one. A message to each person or household, with their name in it. It is slower, but it feels like an invitation, and people answer it.
• A broadcast list. The same message goes privately to many people at once, and each sees it as a message from you. It only reaches people who have saved your number, so check that before you rely on it. A list has a limit on its size, so a big wedding needs more than one.
• A group. Good for keeping the family up to date. Poor for inviting: replies are lost among the greetings, everyone’s number is shown to everyone, and people are added or left out by mistake.
• Your status. Good for the save-the-date. It disappears after a day and only your contacts see it, so do not use it as the invitation.

Make the link look right

When you paste a link into WhatsApp, a small picture and a title appear above your message. Wait for them to appear before you press send. Without them your invitation arrives as a bare web address, and people are slow to open those.

Send the invitation to yourself first. Open it on your own phone and read it as a guest would: the names, the day, the date, the time, the place.

Collecting the replies

• Give a date. “Please reply by 21 November.” Three weeks before the day gives your caterer real numbers.
• Keep the replies in one place. Replies scattered across chats, calls and voice notes are how guests get counted twice or not at all.
• Count seats, not invitations. One invitation to a household can mean five chairs.
• Follow up by phone. Two weeks before the day, call the people who have not answered. Some never will until you ask.

Guests who are not on WhatsApp

There are always a few. Call them, and write their answer into your list yourself. Send the link by SMS to those who have a phone that can open it, and keep a printed card for the ones who would like to hold it.

Keeping it private

An invitation on WhatsApp can be forwarded to anyone, so decide how much it should show.

• Do not post the full address of a family home on your status or on other social media.
• Put the details behind a link that you control, with a passcode if you want one.
• Tell your close family that the invitation is for the people it was sent to.

What to send, and when

• As soon as the date is set: a save-the-date, to family abroad first.
• Six to eight weeks before: the invitation, with the reply date.
• The week before: a reminder with the time and the directions.
• Afterwards: a thank-you, with a few photographs.

Sending yours

On Murudo Weddings you choose a card, and it shows as the picture beside your link on WhatsApp. Your guests open the link and reply in one tap, with no app and no account, and your guest list fills in as they answer. You can add a passcode, and your page is hidden from search engines. With the upgrade, each guest gets a link and a card with their own name on it. It is free to start.