For guests deciding what the shoes are for
Black tie optional means six different things to six different guests. A dress code section on the invitation says it once, kindly and specifically, so nobody arrives in the wrong shoes for the wrong reason.
Paper forces brevity. A printed card has room for three words at most, and three words are not a dress code; they are a guess. Cocktail on a river boat reads differently to a 70th birthday in a hotel dining room, and every guest fills the gap from their own experience, usually at one of the two extremes.
A page has more room, and guests read it on the morning they choose the outfit. A dress code section can be the warm, specific paragraph the card never carried: what the venue feels like, what you would like the room to look like, and what everyone enjoyed wearing last time.
The tone is yours to choose; the specificity is the part that does the work.
Smart and comfortable. The ceremony is on grass and the marquee floor is stone, so thin heels will not thank you. Summer suits, dresses you can sit in for three hours, colours encouraged, and white left for the two of us.
We are marking forty years, and ties and long dresses make the photographs feel like the occasion. If you would rather come in a good shirt and no jacket, nobody will mind, and your drink will be waiting all the same.
The restaurant is dim, the food is the point, and the table seats sixteen. Come as your best evening self: no strict rules, and the only wrong choice is an outfit you cannot sit comfortably in.
Clothes that can be ruined, shoes that can get muddy, and a spare pair of socks for the water fight. The games do not care what anyone looks like, and neither do we.
On a full event page the dress code has a place of its own, between the schedule and the practical details, as visible as parking or the FAQ. Guests who have to hunt for it decide it must not be important.
Grass, stone, heat, a cold church, a long standing reception. A reason makes a rule easy to follow, and guests plan around the reason rather than guessing at the formality level.
Never you must. The warmest version offers an easy way out: a jacket by the door, trousers instead of a dress, flats for the garden. Guidance reads as hosting; a list of requirements reads as a summons.
The section gets read late: the evening before, sometimes the morning of. That is precisely why it lives on a page rather than a card. Guests return to the invitation link in WhatsApp the way they return to a chat with a friend, and the paragraph they quote to each other while comparing outfits is your actual wording rather than a rumour of it.
One practical habit pays for itself: mention the dress note in the first message you send, in a single line, telling people the page has a word on what to wear. Guests who know the answer exists stop asking you for one.
How it works
Wedding, birthday, baby shower and graduation pages carry a dress code section as part of the full guest site. Jitabi on WhatsApp, or Clara in the browser, will draft one from a sentence about the venue.
Describe the setting and how you want the room to feel, then let the in-app drafting shape it into sentences. You trim; keep the one detail about the ground, the heat or the photographs that decides everything else.
Send the link as usual, with one line pointing to the page for what to wear. The note does its work the night before the event, not the day you send it.
When a guest messages asking about jeans or jackets, reply with a sentence and let the section carry the rest. The written answer keeps every later guest out of the same private thread.
Questions
Yes, if it covers each day separately. A weekend with a garden ceremony on Saturday and a long brunch on Sunday needs two small paragraphs, not one umbrella term. Guests plan outfits day by day and will read ahead exactly that way.
Name what you want and why, then make it optional in practice: a soft palette for the wedding photographs, with nothing changed if someone comes in their own colours. A request that is genuinely optional reads as warmth rather than instruction.
It should agree with the card and then do more. The printed line can say black tie; the page explains that ties and long dresses make the photographs, and that anyone in a good shirt will still be handed a drink.
Write the note so the easy answer is also an acceptable one. If the section ends by saying anything comfortable works, mean it, and name the one real constraint, like not wearing white. The people you worry about are usually the ones reading it most carefully.
Get Started
Put the dress code section where guests will find it the night before, phrased in words you would say to them at the door. Start free and send one link that settles shoes, ties and colours in a single paragraph.
