A print-ready card is built for paper. Drop that same file into a message and the phone crops the edges, shrinks the type, and hides the date under a round mask. Texting an invitation needs its own crop: a version sized for a thread, and a taller one sized for stories. I deliver both, with the print PDF, in one shared folder. No app to install. You send the message yourself. I don’t host replies and I don’t send the texts.
A print file is the wrong shape for a phone
A printed invitation is a wide, short rectangle. A phone shows a taller window. Messaging apps also round the corners and steal a strip for the time, the sender name, and a download control. The live area you planned for a trimmer is not the live area a guest actually sees.
Bleed is the usual trap. On paper, bleed is extra ink that gets cut away, so a colour can run off the edge without a white sliver. On a phone there is no trim. That extra sits in the picture, or the app crops inward until a name loses its last letter. Crop marks fail in the same way. They tell a press where to cut. In a text they look like a drafting error someone forgot to delete. Guests pinch and zoom. They still miss the time.
A print-ready PDF at 300dpi with bleed and crop marks is the right file for a shop. It is a heavy file for a phone. People wait on it. Some networks squeeze the image until the names go soft. The texting size is a lighter picture, already cropped to the live area, with the type large enough to read with a thumb over a kettle.
A screenshot of a proof is worse than the PDF. Proofs still show bleed, slugs, and sometimes a colour bar. That is a working file. It is not a guest file. I would never send it.
When I design a custom invitation, the print file is for the shop. The other two files are for the phone. They are not three copies of the same crop. They are three jobs. If you only brief the print size, the phone versions have to be invented later, usually by stretching. Stretching is how a serif turns into hair and a crest sits under a bubble tail.
The choice between paper and a message is a separate one. I wrote about digital or printed invitations elsewhere. This is the file you send once you have already decided to text.
What the texting size is for
The texting size is the one you attach in a message. Think of it as a digital invitation phone size: the card as a guest will see it in a thread, with the important lines held inside a safe area that a round crop cannot steal.
I keep names, the date, the place, and the reply line away from the edges. Thumbs rest on corners. Time stamps sit on corners. A monogram that looked balanced on paper can vanish under a reaction emoji. Quiet margin on a phone is not wasted space. It is the part of the card that survives other people’s software.
You still write a short line of your own. The picture is the card. The message is the manners. Name who is hosting, name the day, and say the details are on the image. Then attach the file. That is the cleanest way I know to text a card: one clear sentence, then the picture, then stop. Don’t paste the whole wording into the message as well. Guests will read one or the other, not both.
Paperless invitation dimensions are not a second print spec. They are a crop and a safe area. I won’t quote pixel counts, because every app frames a picture a little differently, and a number that is right in one thread is wrong in another. What I can stand behind is the job. The wording holds. The edges are quiet. Nothing that matters sits in the last few millimetres.
The files are yours outright, forever, with no licence and no per-use fee. You forward them from your own phone. If a guest list changes, you send the same file again. These files are not personalised per guest, so you don’t need a new export for each name.
For digital and paperless invitations I build this size from the first sketch, not as a leftover from the print PDF. The hierarchy is different on a small screen. The names go up. The verse, if there is one, often comes out. A phone is a poor place for a paragraph.
What the stories size is for
The stories size is the tall one. It is built for Instagram and Facebook stories, the full-screen frame people hold up for a few seconds. Invitation stories size is a different crop again. A print card letterboxed in a story looks like a stamp on a door. A texting crop, which sits closer to a square, leaves empty bands that the app fills with blur or black.
I design the stories file as a poster, not as a card. The names sit larger. The date sits higher, because the lower strip is where usernames, stickers, and reply buttons land. I treat that lower strip as a margin, even though it is not paper. A dress line that looked elegant at the foot of a card will sit under a sticker. Move it, or cut it.
This file is for a story you post, or a story you send to a close list. It is not a substitute for the texting size. People who receive only the story will miss it when it disappears. People who receive only the text keep a copy in the thread. Use both if you want both jobs done. Don’t ask one crop to pretend it is the other.
I still don’t post it for you. I don’t run the account. I hand you the file in the same folder as the print PDF and the texting size.
If you stretch the print file to fill a story, the type goes thin and a floral border turns into a smear. If you pad it with a photograph of a table, the card becomes decoration. Either can be a look. Neither is a readable invitation. If the point is that a guest can screenshot the facts, the facts have to be large enough to survive that screenshot. A tiny card floating in a kitchen scene will not.
Type, margins and QR codes that break on a phone
Print type is meant to be held at arm’s length. Phone type is meant to be read at a glance, often outdoors, often in a group chat that already has twelve other pictures. I set the texting and stories files larger than the print file, and I drop the lines that only make sense on paper: the envelope note, the line about an enclosed card, the tiny mark on the reverse.
Margins are the usual failure. A guest’s phone applies its own mask. Anything inside a finger’s width of the edge is a candidate for vanishing. I pull the wording in. I would rather have more quiet ground around the names than a date that sits under a timestamp.
QR codes fail in a different way. A code that scans on a printed card can be too fine once it is shrunk into a message. Compression adds grey around the squares. A round crop can clip a corner, and a clipped code is a dead code. If you want a code on the phone versions, it has to be drawn for the phone, with quiet space around it, and it has to point at a page you actually control. I wrote out the rest of that problem in QR codes on invitations. I don’t host RSVP pages, so a code on my files is never a reply tool I run for you.
A few things I watch before I export:
- Names, the weekday, the date, the time and the place sit inside the safe area, not in the bleed and not in the corners.
- The reply line names a person and a method you will actually check, on a card that will be forwarded without you attached to the thread.
- Decorative rules, wreaths and heavy borders stop before the crop, so a round mask cannot turn them into a bite mark.
Don’t stack a QR code, a map, a dress line and a full itinerary on the texting size. A phone is a small stage. One job per file. Save the extra facts for a second message, or for the printed details card if there is one.
When I would not text the card at all
Texting an invitation is a fair fit for a birthday, a shower, a weekday lunch, a church social, a change of park. It is a thin way to ask someone to travel, to take a day off, or to sit through a ceremony in clothes they will buy. I would not text the card at all when the event is a wedding with a seated meal, when older guests still read their post, or when the keep is part of the gift of being asked.
A screenshot of a printed suite also fails when the suite has layers. An invitation, a details card and a reply card are three objects in the hand. In a message they become a strip of pictures a guest flicks past. If you must text a wedding, send the invitation file only, and put the extra facts on a later message. Don’t send five images and hope the right one is saved.
If the guest list is mixed, paper for some and a message for others, use the same wording on both. The texting size should read as the same invitation, not a condensed poster with jokes the printed card does not make. People compare. They will notice if one version is warmer than the other.
It is also fine to text a reminder after a printed card has already gone out. That is a different job from sending the invitation itself. A reminder can be a sentence. It does not need the full card attached, and attaching the print PDF will only reopen the crop problem you already solved.
Guests who need to answer you should answer in the thread, or by the method printed on the card. I don’t collect those replies. Put a name you check on the file, not a tool I don’t run.
Once you have decided to send a message, send the texting size. Don’t send the print PDF and ask people to zoom. A good texted card disappears into the thread after it has done its job. The guest has the day, the place, and a way to reach you. They don’t have a picture of your printer’s marks, and they don’t have to rotate the phone to find the time. That is the whole point of the second file.