How to send wedding invitations by text, email, or link

You have the wedding invitation and a list of ninety people to send it to. Now it has to reach them without looking like a newsletter. Text works best, email is fine for the office crowd, and a plain link works anywhere. Here is the order I would do it in.

1. 01

   Open it on your own phone first

   Not the laptop preview. Your phone, over mobile data, with the sound on. This is what your guests get. Check the names, the date, the map link, and that the reply works. Send yourself a test text and open it from the message, not from the app.

   
2. 02

   Make the guest list before you send anything

   One line per household, exactly as it should read: "The Patterson family", "Ana and Marco Reyes", "Ruth Caldwell". If your invitation lets guests reply by picking their name from your list, this is what they will see, and it is how you stop duplicate replies and uninvited plus-ones. Do this before the first message goes out, not after.

3. 03

   Write one message, then personalize the first line

   Keep a base message in your notes and change only the greeting. Something like: "Hi Reyes family! Our wedding invitation is at the link below. Everything is on the page, including the reply, so please let us know by September 5 whether you can make it. We would love to have you there. Eleanor & William." Then the link, on its own line, last.

4. 04

   Send by text, one household at a time

   Text is where people read their personal messages, so that is where the invitation belongs. One message per household, not a group chat: a group of forty strangers is not an invitation, and the replies turn into a conversation nobody asked for. It takes about a minute per household. Put on a podcast.

5. 05

   Use email for the people who live in email

   Older relatives, colleagues, anyone who has ever said "send me an email so I don't forget". Same message, one recipient per email, the link on its own line. Never CC. If you must send to several at once, use BCC, though a separate email each is kinder and takes no longer.

6. 06

   Post nothing public

   Not on social media, not in a group, not on a wedding website page that anyone can find. The invitation link is the invitation; whoever has it can read it. Keep it between you and the people you are inviting. Your wedding website, if you have one, can hold the schedule and the hotel block; the invitation itself goes person to person.

7. 07

   Watch the replies land, then remind once

   The first replies come the same evening. Most of the rest come within two weeks. About a week before the deadline, send one reminder, by name, only to the quiet households. After the deadline, pick up the phone. The full week-by-week is in how to get RSVPs back on time.

   

The message, three ways

What makes it look like spam

• A bare link with no words. People do not open links that arrive without a sentence from a person they know.
• A shortened link. bit.ly and the like hide where the link goes. Send the real address.
• A group message. Forty names in the recipient line reads as a broadcast. It is also how Uncle Ray ends up replying to everyone.
• Sending at 2 a.m. Phones buzz. Send in the early evening, when people look at their messages and have a minute.
• Five follow-ups. One reminder is a courtesy. The second is a phone call. There is no third.

Who should send it

Whoever the household knows best. Your friends get it from you, your partner's cousins from your partner, your parents' friends from your parents, in their own words. The link is the same; the greeting is what makes it personal. If you share the dashboard with your partner, you can both see replies land without forwarding screenshots to each other.

If someone cannot open it

It happens two or three times per wedding, almost always a relative who does not tap links from numbers they do not recognize. Call them, tell them it is you, and resend. For anyone without a phone at all, print one copy of the same design and hand it over. Then write their reply on the dashboard yourself when they tell you.