How it works

1. Pick the occasion. There are sixteen to start from — wedding, engagement, birthday, baby shower, naming ceremony, housewarming, anniversary, graduation, retirement, festival, prayer or ceremony, memorial, office event, party, reunion — and “Something else” for anything that is not on the list. Each one starts the card with wording and a look that suit it.
2. Fill in the card. The names or title, the date and time, the venue and its address. The card beside the form changes as you type; until you have typed, it shows sample text so you can see where everything will sit.
3. Send it. Under “Send it” there is a message with a link in it. Send it by WhatsApp, text message or e-mail, or through any other app with “Share…”. There is no “create” step: the link is always the invitation as it stands.

The person who opens the link sees the card, how many days are left, and buttons to add the event to their calendar, open the place in a map and reply to you.

What goes on the card

If the words are too many for the space, the card makes all of them a little smaller together rather than letting anything spill over the artwork.

The look of the card

There are ten designs — Classic, Flowers, Garland, Party, Moon & stars, Arch, Modern, Quiet, Sparkle and Plain — and each comes in ten colours, seven light and three dark with gold: navy, maroon and emerald. The big line can be set in five letterings: Classic, Script, Elegant, Playful and Modern. The date can be written day first, month first, or with a 24-hour clock.

The card is 5 : 7, the usual shape of a printed invitation. “Download picture” saves it as a 1500 × 2100 pixel image and “Download PDF” as a single 5 × 7 inch (127 × 178 mm) page, both sharp enough to print. Nothing is added to the card — no logo and no watermark.

Sending it to each guest by name

Type a name in the “To” box and both the message and the card become personal: the message opens “Dear Asha & family,” and the card that guest sees carries the same line at the top. Leave it empty and the message opens with a plain “Hello,”.

If you keep your guests in the Guest List Maker on the same phone or computer, they appear under “Send to your guest list”, each with their own buttons. A guest whose number is written with its country code (such as +91) gets a WhatsApp button that opens a chat with them, the message already written; any guest with a phone number gets a Text button; and every guest has Copy. Tapping one ticks that guest as invited, in the Guest List Maker too, so the list of people still to invite gets shorter as you work down it.

The message itself can be rewritten. Keep {link} in it — that is where each guest's invitation goes — and {name} where you want their name.

Replies

Put a name and a phone number or e-mail address under “Replies go to” and guests get two buttons: “I'll be there” and “Can't make it”. Tapping one opens a message to that person, already written, with the guest's name and how many of them are coming. A number that starts with its country code opens WhatsApp; a number without one opens a text message; an e-mail address opens an e-mail.

Nothing is collected for you. There is no server behind this page, so replies arrive as ordinary messages and you record them yourself — the Guest List Maker has a Coming / Can't come setting for exactly that.

What is stored, and where

The invitation you are making is saved in this browser, on this device, so it is still here when you come back. It is never uploaded. The link carries the whole invitation inside it — which also means that anyone who is given the link can read it, so put nothing on the card that you would not print on paper. The guest's name, when there is one, travels in the link too.

One limit follows from this: the small preview a chat app shows for the link is the same for every invitation of that occasion (“You're invited to a wedding”), because the app reads it from the page, not from your card. To put your own card in the chat, use “Share the card picture”.