Making the invitation is the part people enjoy and the part that takes the least time. What decides whether the evening works is everything after you press send — whether it reaches your guests, whether they reply, and whether the number you end up with is real. This is a maker built around that second half.
You will make the invitation on a laptop at close to full size. Your guests will first see it in a notification or an inbox preview at roughly the size of a playing card. Fine detail, thin type and low-contrast color pairings all disappear at that scale.
Before you send, shrink it until it is about an inch and a half tall and look again. If you cannot tell what it is at that size, neither can a guest glancing at a lock screen.
This is the one mistake that consistently costs the most. Text baked into an image cannot be resized, selected, copied into a calendar, read by a screen reader or translated — and every correction means re-exporting the artwork and re-sending.
Artwork that is purely artwork, with the title, date, time and address printed as real text around it, avoids all of that. It is also why the designs here carry no text of their own.
Guests are deciding four things: can I make it, where is it, what kind of event is this, and what do I need to do. An invitation that answers those gets replied to on the spot instead of screenshotted and forgotten.
The line most often missing is the shape of the event. "Drinks and snacks, no dinner", "kids welcome", "we will be outside" — one sentence like that is worth more to your reply rate than any design decision.
Email is fine for anything with a long runway. For anything closer than about two weeks, and for reaching parents in particular, a text is the more reliable route — it gets answered while someone is standing in a parking lot rather than filed for later.
Sending to both from one guest list is the practical answer: guests who only gave you a phone number get a text, guests who only gave you an email get an email, and the replies land in the same total either way.
Yes. Every design is free to use and free to send, uploading your own artwork costs nothing, and there is no per-guest fee or watermark.
Yes. Upload the file and it becomes your invitation, with the same reminders, private RSVP links and headcount tracking as a built-in design.
A 4:5 portrait image is the safest proportion: it is the traditional card shape and it fills a phone screen without cropping. Aim for at least 1200 pixels on the short edge.
No. Text inside an image cannot be resized, copied into a calendar or read by a screen reader, and correcting it means re-exporting and re-sending. Keep those details as real text.
Yes, from the same guest list. For anything less than about two weeks out, a text is the more reliable way to actually be read.
Collect RSVPs online for free. Every guest gets a private one-tap link with no account, and replies come back as a confirmed headcount you can cater to.
Track RSVPs in one place: who replied, who has not, how many people are actually coming, and what each guest still needs. Free, with a guest list you can export.