Inviting the guests who are not online

Every guest list has a handful of people who are not reachable the way everybody else is. Usually older relatives, occasionally somebody who simply does not use any of it.

It is a small group and it deserves more thought than the other ninety, because these are frequently the guests who would be most hurt by an invitation that felt automated.

Count them first#

Go through your list and mark everybody you cannot reach by email or message. Almost every couple who does this is surprised: the number is usually between three and ten, not thirty.

That changes the problem entirely. Ten people is a set of individual gestures rather than a second production run.

The phone call is the invitation#

For most of this group, the right answer is not a document at all.

We are getting married on the twelfth of September and we would love you there. I am going to put it in the post to you as well so you have it written down.

Then follow with something physical. The call is the invitation. The card is the keepsake and the reference.

Printing a handful#

This is where couples assume they are back to a print run. They are not. Ten copies is a completely different proposition from a hundred: no minimum orders, no envelope addressing evening, no postage worth mentioning.

Print the same invitation your other guests are opening, so that the day looks the same in everybody's hands. A photograph of the invitation printed at home on decent paper is more than good enough, and it costs almost nothing.

The economics of the two approaches are in what each format really costs, and this hybrid is usually the cheapest of the three.

Give them a reply route that is not a link#

The most common failure here is not the invitation, it is the reply. A guest who cannot open a link cannot press yes on it either, and they will not tell you that.

Put a phone number on the printed version.

Just ring Sarah on the number below and she will put you down.

Then enter their answer yourself, into the same place all the other replies live, so your head count is one number rather than a list plus a note. Collecting replies online covers keeping it in one place.

Use the relative who is the bridge#

Almost every family has one. The daughter who visits every Sunday, the neighbour, the cousin who handles everything.

Send them the link and ask them to sit down with it. An eighty year old looking at their granddaughter opening the invitation on a phone gets the whole experience, and gets it with company, which is better than a card through a door.

Do not treat it as a lesser invitation#

The tone matters more than the format. An invitation that arrives with a call and a card, from somebody who thought about how to reach them, is the best invitation on your list.

What does not work is a printed card with no call, arriving weeks after everybody else was told, because by then they have already heard about it from somebody at church.

Send everybody at the same time#

Whatever the channel, everything goes out in the same week. The guests most likely to feel like an afterthought are exactly the ones who will find out last if you leave them until the printing is done.

The full sequence of who to tell when is in a twelve month invitation timeline.

The day itself#

Anybody in this group also needs the practical details in a form they can hold: the time, the address, the parking, who is picking them up. That is a printed page and a phone call the week before, not a link resent.

Writing an order of the day covers what goes on it.