QR Code Wedding Invitation: Size, Target and Testing

A QR code on your wedding invitation is the bridge between the printed card and everything that changes after printing. Guests scan the little square with their phone camera and land on your wedding website: directions, schedule, RSVP, all current. Done well, nobody thinks about it. Done badly, it's grandma at the kitchen table scanning five times while nothing happens. Here's how to get it right.

What should the code open?

Your wedding website, not a PDF. A PDF is frozen the moment it leaves the printer: change the start time and every scanned copy is wrong. It's also miserable to read on a phone, and guests can't reply to it. A wedding page does the opposite: you edit it once, every scan afterwards shows the new version, and the RSVP is one tap away. If you don't have a page yet, here's how to make a wedding website before the cards go to print.

One QR code for every wedding invitation

A question I hear a lot: does each guest need a personal code so the RSVPs land in the right place? No, and please don't do that to yourself. Printing 80 individual codes means 80 chances to put the wrong card in the wrong envelope.

The trick is RSVP by name matching. Every card carries the same code, guests open the page and type their name, and the system connects them to the right entry on your guest list, including their menu choice and allergies. That's how about2marry works: one code for all invitations, one guest list, no sorting afterwards. More on that in the guide to collecting RSVPs online.

Privacy still matters, because a printed card can end up anywhere. That's what the access code is for: whoever scans the QR code first sees a locked page and needs the short code from the invitation to get in. Print it right next to the QR code, something like "Code: annaundben".

How big should the code be?

• At least 2 x 2 cm in print. That's the size where nearly every phone scans on the first try. If you have room, go bigger.
• Dark code, light background. Skip the artistic version printed over a photo. Contrast is what the camera needs.
• Leave a quiet zone. A white margin around the code, roughly the width of one of its little squares, keeps scanners happy.
• Never stretch it. A QR code is square. If your layout tool distorts it even slightly, it stops working.

Test before you print

This is the step people skip, and it's the one that saves you. Before you order 80 cards:

• Scan with at least two different phones, one iPhone and one Android, straight from the camera app.
• Print a proof at 100 percent on your home printer and scan that, not the version on your screen.
• Hold the card at arm's length, not two centimetres from the lens. That's how guests will do it.
• If your cards are glossy, tilt the proof under a lamp. Glare can blind the camera.
• Follow the link on the spot and click through to the RSVP, with the access code, like a guest would.

Ten minutes of testing, and your invitation does its job for months. The same link works before the cards exist too, by the way: that's the digital save the date.