The first thing most guests see is not your invitation. It is a small card in the chat window: a picture, a title line, a line of text under it. On a personal link that picture carries their own name, above your names, your date and your venue. Two facts decide everything else: the chat app draws that card rather than us, and once it has drawn one it holds on to it, so an edit you make today may not reach a card sent last week. Here is what goes on it, and what to check before the first message goes out.
What is actually on the card
The picture is made for that one guest, at the moment their chat app looks the link up. Reading down it:
- Their name, as the greeting, sitting where a printed card would put “Dear Amara and Nuwan”.
- A short line reading “You’re Invited”.
- Your names. Birthday designs print the one celebrant rather than a pair.
- The date, written out in full, with the day of the week.
- The venue, if you have set one.
- The Link Invitation mark at the foot.
Under the picture the chat app prints two lines it lifts from the page: a title made from your names, and a short description naming the celebration and, where there is a single place to name, the venue. That is the whole card. It is small, and a guest reads it in roughly the time it takes to scroll past.
Why their name is on it
Every guest’s link ends in a short code, the bit after ?g= on the end of the address. That code is the only reason the card can be personal. It tells the invitation who is looking, and the picture is drawn from there: their name at the top, your details underneath. Sending is a per-guest act for the same reason. The WhatsApp send button on a row of your guest list opens that person’s chat with their own link already typed into the message box, and you press send. There is no single broadcast to everybody, which is precisely why no two cards carry the same greeting.
Take the code away and the card still works, it just stops being personal. A link posted into a family group, or copied out of a message and retyped, greets “Dear Guest”. Nothing breaks. Your names, the date and the venue are all still there.
The code does one more thing worth knowing about. If your celebration runs across several ceremonies, or across several places, and a guest is invited to only some of them, their card shows their date and their venue rather than the headline ones. A cousin coming only to the homecoming should not open a chat and read a day she was never invited to.
The chat app draws the card, not us
This is worth saying plainly, because it sets the limit on what anyone can promise you. The preview card is not a WhatsApp feature we have bought into. Any web page can carry a few tags describing itself, a title and a description and a picture, and your invitation carries them, filled in with your details and, on a personal link, the guest’s name. What happens next belongs to the app.
WhatsApp fetches the page, reads those tags, and draws a card in its own house style. Signal, Telegram, iMessage, Messenger and Viber each do their own version, and none of them look the same as the others. Some guests will see no card at all: link previews can be switched off, and on a slow connection the message often arrives before the picture does. Treat the card as a pleasant extra. The invitation itself, and the RSVP it asks for, have to stand on their own.
When the card shows something you have already changed
Chat apps hold on to previews. A card is drawn once, filed, and then served from that file every time somebody scrolls past it, rather than fetched fresh from your page. A message sent three weeks ago therefore carries a three-week-old picture, and an edit you make this afternoon does not reach backwards into that chat to redraw it.
Move the reception to a different hall on a Tuesday morning, and the cousins you messaged a fortnight earlier can scroll past your message that evening and read the old venue in the little picture above it. The link underneath is untouched and never needs resending. They tap, and the invitation they land on is the current one. Only the card is running behind.
What to check before the first message goes out
A few minutes here saves a round of apologies later.
- Read your own names as they will print. The card uses what is saved on the invitation, not what you meant to type.
- Tidy the names on your guest list. The greeting is the name exactly as you saved it, so “Aunty (mum’s side)” will appear on the card in front of her.
- Keep the venue name short. The card prints the venue field exactly as you saved it, so a full legal name with a road and a district turns the bottom of the picture into a paragraph.
- Publish before you test. A draft shows a plain Link Invitation banner instead of your details, on purpose, so nothing leaks before you are ready. A card checked while the invitation is still a draft tells you nothing.
- Send one to yourself. Add yourself as a guest with your own WhatsApp number, send that link, and look at what actually lands in the chat.
That last one is the only test that really counts.
The guests for whom none of this matters
Some of your list will never see a preview card, and it is worth knowing who they are before you spend an evening on it. The uncle who reads every message in the family group but has never once tapped a link will scroll past the card without registering that it is tappable at all. A better picture does not reach him. Ring him, or put a printed card in his hand, and count him as invited by other means.
The same goes for the households where one person forwards everything on to everybody else. The moment a link is forwarded, the greeting belongs to whoever it was originally sent to, and the next chat gets a card with the first guest’s name on it. And if you are sending the link by email, or reading it out over the phone to someone who will type it in, there is no card in the picture at all.
None of that makes the invitation worse. It means the preview card earns its keep with the guests who live inside their chat app, and the invitation has to do the work for everyone else.
Frequently asked questions
Can I change the picture that appears in the chat?
Not as a separate image. The card is built from the invitation itself, so you change it by changing what is on the invitation: the names, the date, the venue. There is no upload for a different preview picture, and no way to write your own title line.
Why does one guest's card say Dear Guest?
Their link lost its personal code on the way. That usually means it was pasted without the end of the address, retyped by hand, or shared from a group rather than sent to them individually. Send again from your guest list and the code travels with it.
Do guests see each other's names on the card?
No. A card is built from one guest’s code and carries only that guest’s name. The exception is forwarding: if someone passes their own link on, the card that lands in the next chat still greets them rather than the new reader.
Related: Sending invitations on WhatsApp