What to check before you buy a digital invitation

Search for digital wedding invitations in Pakistan and you will find three very different things sold under one name. Knowing which one you are looking at will save you money and a few awkward WhatsApp messages.

The video

A short animation of your names with music. It looks lovely for twenty seconds, and then it is a file. Guests cannot tap a venue to get directions, cannot add the Baraat to their calendar, and if the hall changes you are re-sending a new video to everybody and hoping they delete the old one.

The PDF or image

A picture of a card. It is easy to forward, which is also the problem: it gets screenshotted, cropped and re-shared until the timing on it is a rumour. And a picture cannot tell one guest they have four seats and another that they have two.

The real page

A web page with its own address. It opens in any phone's browser without an app, it knows what today's date is, and everything on it is live. Directions are a tap, the calendar file is a tap, and when you change a detail every link you have already sent shows the new version.

Five things to check

• Open the demo on your own phone. If it is a real page you will be able to scroll it, tap the map and switch the language.
• Ask what happens when a detail changes after you have sent it. The right answer is 'nothing, it updates'.
• Ask whether guests can be addressed by name with their own seat count.
• Ask what you are paying for and for how long. A one-time price with a stated access period is clear; a subscription is not.
• Ask who edits it. If the answer is 'send us the change and we will do it', you will be waiting on someone at eleven at night.

Every design on Dawatnama is a working demo, not a picture of one. Open any of them and scroll it the way a guest would before you spend anything.