A link shared with your whole guest list cannot know who is reading it. A personal link can. It is the same invitation address with a short code on the end, and that code tells the page which guest has arrived, so their name is on the invitation and their reply comes back attached to them. The plain address still works; it simply has no name on it.
What a personal link actually is
Your invitation lives at one web address. It starts as a short random code and you can change it in your dashboard, /i/kasun-dilini rather than /i/7bq3xm2p. That is the public link, and anyone holding it can open the invitation.
A personal link is that same address with a query added to the end: ?g= followed by a short code belonging to one guest. Nothing else about the page changes. Same design, same photographs, same schedule, same music. The code is the only difference, and it is what lets the invitation recognise who is holding the phone.
Two things follow, and both are worth stating plainly. Only a link carrying a ?g= code shows a guest’s name. And the public address keeps working whether or not you have sent personal links, so if somebody posts it in a family group, everyone who taps it sees your invitation with no name on it.
What the invitation can do once it knows who is reading
Once the page can identify the guest, several small things stop being manual.
- Their name is on the invitation. Nothing to type, no code to enter, no account to create.
- On the designs that open with a sealed cover, the cover is addressed to them. They tap to break the seal and find their own name underneath.
- The preview card in the WhatsApp chat greets them by name before they tap anything. On the plain link, that same card says “Dear Guest”.
- They see only the ceremonies you ticked them into: put the office crowd on the reception and not the ceremony, and the ceremony is not in their copy of the schedule. Guests you have not narrowed see the whole day, which is where everyone starts.
None of it asks anything of the guest: the invitation opens personalised in any phone browser, with nothing to install.
Replies that come back already attached to a name
On a personal link the reply form already knows whose it is. The guest chooses yes or no, sets how many are coming, and that is the whole interaction. It lands on their row in your guest list.
On the plain public link there is no guest record to match them to, so if you have left public replies switched on, the form has to ask for a name and a number. You get whatever people type. Amma. Ranjith uncle. Two cousins with the same surname spelled two ways. Then you sit down on the Tuesday, with the caterer wanting numbers by Thursday, working out whether the Perera who replied is the Perera you invited or his brother.
A planning habit worth borrowing, nothing more scientific than that: leave a clear fortnight between the date you ask guests to reply by and the day anyone else wants final numbers. That fortnight is when you go back to the people who have not answered, and going back is quick only if the list tells you which names those are.
Who has opened, and what an open does not prove
Because every guest has their own link, your guest list can show a delivery state per guest rather than one figure for the whole list: sent or not, opened or not, replied or not.
The state belongs to the link, and a guest holds one link per invitation. Build a second invitation for the homecoming, put the same guest on both, and opening one leaves the other showing unopened. Within one invitation there is a single link per guest, so an open says they reached the invitation, not which ceremony on it they read. Opened but not replied needs a nudge; never opened usually needs a working number.
Both plans include open tracking. Nothing has to be switched on for it: no upgrade, no threshold your list crosses at some number of guests. The two plans part company over ready-made design against custom design, not over this.
The plain link still works, and sometimes that is what you want
The public address is not a leak or an oversight. There are evenings when it is the only sensible thing to send: the colleague whose number you do not have, the cousin asking you to forward it to their partner. The plain link does that job, and the cost is only the name on the invitation and the reply attribution that came with it.
If you would rather only the guests you invited by name could reply, public replies can be switched off in the editor; the plain address then shows the invitation and nothing else.
A few people simply do not open links: the grandfather who has never typed a web address, the guest whose only phone belongs to somebody else in the house. Print the handful of cards those people need and send the rest as links. The two mix perfectly well.
And if your whole guest list is twelve people in one family group chat, with no caterer waiting on numbers, be honest with yourself: one shared link is fine and none of this earns its place. Personal links start paying at the size where you have stopped remembering names and started looking them up.
Getting a link to each guest without losing an evening
Add your guests by name on your guest list, and each personal code is minted the first time you send or copy that guest’s link. Where you have stored a WhatsApp number, the send action opens a single chat for that guest, your message and their own link already typed into it. One tap each, one guest at a time. It is not a broadcast and it is not automatic. What you are not doing is copying names and links between a spreadsheet and a chat window.
Copy is there for everybody else. Put one guest’s link wherever it will be seen: an email, an SMS, a message to the son who checks his mother’s phone for her. It behaves the same on arrival, name and open record included.
Frequently asked questions
Can a guest forward their personal link to someone else?
Nothing stops them, and people do. Whoever opens it sees the invitation with the original guest’s name on it, and any reply from that link arrives as that guest’s reply. If two households are sharing a link, add them as two guests.
What happens for a guest I have no number for?
The number is only needed for the WhatsApp send action. Copy that guest’s link instead and it is a full personal link: their name on the invitation, their reply attached, their open recorded. Send it by whatever route you do have. Only a guest who is on no invitation yet has no link to copy.
Do the links break if I change the invitation after sending?
No. Guests keep the same link and see the updated invitation the next time they open it. On paper, a change of time means a reprint.
Related: Per-guest links and open tracking · Sending on WhatsApp