For the one who must find out last
Everyone else needs the time, the place and where to stand. One person must receive none of it. A password over the page, a countdown for the group, and arrival instructions written plainly keep the secret intact.
Most surprises do not fail on the day; they fail in the messages. The invitation lands in a group chat that happens to include the guest of honour's sister, who mentions the evening in a phone call, and eleven days of planning dissolve in one careless sentence. Or the link gets posted somewhere public and travels onward from someone who assumed everybody was invited.
So the page has to do two things at once: give the invited circle everything they need without asking, and give nothing away to anyone who opens it by accident. That is a setting rather than a wish. A site can be password-protected, so the link alone is not enough, and the plan sits behind the password you hand out yourself.
Written for a guest with thirty seconds in a car park, who cannot read a long message.
A locked page means a forwarded link reaches a request for the password instead of your address, the time and the plan. Give the password to the people you actually invited.
The group wants something to look at; the guest of honour must not. A countdown behind a password is encouragement for the invited and nothing for anyone else.
An unpublished page is not visible to guests at all, so you can shape the instructions without anybody reading a half-finished version over your shoulder.
Three short paragraphs, written the way these pages usually need them.
Please be inside by 6:50 rather than arriving at 7. Park on the side street behind the hall and use the side door; the front is where they will walk past.
Photos welcome from the moment the doors open, nothing before. The one request is that the pictures go up after Sunday, not during.
Password-only, because it is a surprise. Ask Marta rather than me, and please do not forward the link.
A surprise still needs a caterer's number, a cake size and enough glasses. Guests reply on the page against a name, with plus-ones inside whatever you allow, so the confirmed list fills without anybody being asked directly, which is the only way to count heads for a person who must not know. The names that stay silent appear as a gap, and reminders can go out to them from the list rather than becoming twenty copies of the same message.
Two further notes from people who have done this before. Keep the guest of honour off the list entirely, including any shared household: if a partner lives there, one reply is enough and it should not be the one that reaches the kitchen table. And run the page with someone else where you can, since collaborators can be added with their own access.
How it works
Sign up and build on the web, or message Jitabi with one line: a surprise for Sofie, Saturday the twenty-sixth, forty guests. Nothing is guest-visible until you publish.
Time to be inside by, the door, the parking, where to stand. These matter more than the decoration, and they are what everybody re-reads in the car.
Choose the access password and decide how many people each invitation may confirm, so the count stays inside what you can feed.
Send link and password by hand rather than into a mixed group. Confirmations accumulate against names, reminders handle the quiet ones, and the guest of honour reads nothing.
Questions
Change the password and pass the new one round the invited circle. The old link then opens a locked page instead of your plan, which is why the password is worth setting before you send anything at all.
Only if it lives where the guest of honour can see it. Behind a password it is encouragement for the invited; a shared screen or a printed card on the kitchen counter is where it stops being private.
Replies land against names on the page, with companions inside the limit you set, so the number builds itself. Nobody has to be asked directly, least of all the person the party is for.
Yes. Collaborators can be added with their own level of access, so two or three people can watch the count and send reminders without screenshots or passwords being passed around.
Then post nothing there. Send the link and password individually, or through a separate group made for the surprise, and keep the page itself locked in case either gets forwarded.
Get Started
Give the invited circle everything they need to arrive quietly and on time, count them without asking, and let the guest of honour be the last to read a word of it.
