Your invitation gets a web address the moment it is created, and by default that address is eight random characters. Rename it to something built from your names, and do it before you send anything to anyone. A guest decides whether a link is safe in the second before they tap it, and random characters are what an unsafe link looks like.
Why a random address makes people hesitate
When you send the invitation on WhatsApp, the address is sitting there in the message, in full, for your guest to read. Something like /i/k7m2xq4p tells them nothing at all. Something like /i/amara-and-nuwan tells them who it is from before they have opened it.
This matters most with exactly the people you most want at the wedding. Older relatives have been told by their bank, by their children and by the evening news not to tap links they do not recognise, and they are right to be careful. The uncle who forwards you warnings about fake bank texts will not read your message closely enough to work out that it came from you. He will glance at the string of characters, decide it is the very thing he keeps warning everyone about, and leave it. An address with both your names on it is the one part of the message that still makes sense after it has been forwarded twice or screenshotted once.
There is a duller reason too. Someone will ring you a fortnight later because they have deleted the message and cannot find it. Reading out “amara and nuwan” is one short sentence. Reading out eight random characters means spelling every one of them back to each other and starting again when one of you loses the thread.
Choosing an address you can say out loud
The test is whether you can say it down the phone once and have the other person type it correctly. That rules out more than you would expect:
- Use both first names. Something like amara-and-nuwan, or the shorter amara-nuwan. A surname on its own is ambiguous in a family where three couples share it.
- Keep it short. Two names and a joining word is plenty. If it needs spelling twice, it is too long.
- Leave the date out. A day and month is read differently depending on where your guest lives, so 06-12 is the sixth of December to a guest in Colombo and the twelfth of June to a cousin in Chicago. A year on its own is harmless, it is simply doing no work.
- Keep the hyphen between the names. Run together, two names often make a third word that neither of you wanted.
- Avoid a nickname only your friends use. The colleagues and older relatives on the list will not connect it to you.
If the address you wanted is already taken, add something small and real: the city, the venue, the word wedding. Adding a string of digits instead puts you back where you started.
What the address is allowed to contain
Lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens. Nothing else. You do not have to type it that way, though, because what you type is converted when it is saved. Capitals become lowercase, spaces become hyphens, and an ampersand becomes the word and. Type “Amara & Nuwan” and you get amara-and-nuwan. Your keystrokes are left alone in the box itself, so the line worth reading is the preview underneath it, which shows the address you will actually end up with.
Length runs from three characters at the shortest to sixty at the longest. Sixty is far more room than any readable address needs.
Two further rules decide whether your chosen address is free at all. Addresses are unique across the whole site, so the first invitation to claim one keeps it and everyone else picks again. And a short list of words is held back for the site’s own pages, so those are refused however you type them.
Rename it before you send, not after
This is the part worth getting right the first time. The address is what every link you have already sent points at. Change it afterwards and every one of them breaks, because renaming moves the invitation without leaving a note on the old door. Anyone who taps the message you sent last week meets a screen saying the invitation could not be found, and a few of them will read that as having been quietly dropped from the guest list rather than as an address that moved.
So set it early. Choose the address while you are still building the invitation, before the first message goes out. At that point it costs you a minute. Later it costs a round of apologetic re-sends.
If you have already sent and you genuinely need to change it, you still can. Accept that you are re-sending to everyone you sent to before, and that a few of them will have forwarded the old link to a cousin whose number you do not have.
Editing the invitation itself is a different thing and is safe at any point. Move the time, correct the map pin, change the photograph, and every link anyone holds keeps working and shows the new version. It is only the address that is load-bearing.
When the address is doing less work than you think
Two situations where this deserves less of your attention than the rest of the invitation.
If your list is twenty people who are all in one family group chat, they know the message is from you because they know your number, and they will open anything you send. Set a readable address anyway because it takes a minute, then stop thinking about it.
And if what you actually want is a domain of your own, with your names as the whole address and an email running off the back of it, this is not that. Your invitation lives at an address on our site with your names on the end of it. That is enough for a link in a chat, and it is not something you own. If owning the name matters to you, register a domain separately and treat the two as unrelated purchases.
Frequently asked questions
Can I change the address after I have sent the invitations?
You can rename it whenever you like. What you cannot do is leave anything behind at the address you left. Swap amara-and-nuwan for amara-nuwan and the first one stops being an address at all, while every message already in a guest’s chat history still points at it. Settle this before the first send, and if you change it later, count re-sending to the whole list as part of the job.
What if the address I want is already taken?
Every address on the site is unique, so the first invitation to claim one keeps it. Add the city, the venue or the word wedding, or swap how you join the two names. Something like amara-nuwan-kandy still reads as yours out loud.
Is the address part of each guest link?
Yes. A personal link is your invitation address with a short code for that guest added to the end, so the address is part of every one of them. That is why renaming after sending breaks them, and why it is worth settling on the address first.
Related: All the features · Your invitation as a wedding website