You’ve explored your video call platform options and chosen a party theme.

Now it’s time to set a date and let your guests know about your party – using a digital invitation.

If you don’t know what a digital invitation is – it’s simply a file that you download to your computer (usually a PDF). You can personalize the file by typing in all of your party details in the designated text-fields.

A digital invitation can be either printable – you print the file and hand out or mail the invitations to your guests.

Or virtual – an image you send to your guests in an email or a text message.

In the spirit of staying home, I’ll walk you through how to send a virtual invitation without leaving the house.

Why use a digital invitation?

You might be asking: “Can’t I just text my guests the party details?”

While you could simply send out a text message with all of your party details, a digital invitation has a few benefits which can have a great contribution to the success of your party:

1. A beautifully designed themed party invitation, which is colorful and fun, immediately puts your guests in a happy and festive party atmosphere.
2. A digital invitation organizes all of your party details in an easy-to-read format, so that your guests don’t miss out on any important details.
3. A digital invitation is sent out as a colorful image. This is something your guests can easily look up on their phone and go back to for easy reference (now just imagine scrolling through endless endless non-distinctive text messages trying to find your message about the party!)

How to choose your virtual party invitation?

The best way to find invitations files to download is to look for printable invitations.

While you won’t be printing them, these still come as a digital file that you can download to your computer.

There are so many invitations available online, it can feel overwhelming to choose one for your party.

This is where your party theme comes in to play and makes the choice that much easier for you – simply choose an invitation that goes with your theme!

Quick Tip:

Before you purchase your invitation file, make sure it is designed so that you can put in all of your party information.

What information to put in your digital invitation?

1. Your child’s name and age.
2. Date and time of the party.
3. Location of the party – which platform you’ll be using to host the video call. At this point, you don’t need to send the exact login details. Just let your guests know which platform you’ll be using so that they know what to expect. When the day of your party gets closer, email or text them instructions on how they can join your video call.
4. Special activity requests from your guests – These will make your party so much more fun! But we’ll talk more on them on part 3 of this series.
5. Your RSVP details.

How to turn a printable invitation into a virtual invitation?

Since most online invitations are meant for printing, they often come as PDF files with 2-4 invites per page (to save on printing costs).

You can easily create a file of a single invitation right from your home computer, in a few simple steps.

No special graphics editing software is required – here is a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to turn a printable invitation into a virtual invitation (including screenshots).