Thanksgiving dinner invitations you can send as a link

A Thanksgiving dinner invite has one job: get the right number of people to your table at the right hour, with enough warning that they can book a flight or tell their in-laws no. Everything else is decoration. Send it four weeks out for a sit-down dinner people travel to, two weeks out if the whole list lives within half an hour.

Bringalong turns the invite into a web page instead of a pile of texts you have to count yourself. You fill in the date, time and address, and you get two links: one you share with guests, one you keep. Guests tap Going, Maybe or Can't go, add a plus-one, and type a note about the peanut allergy so you are not relying on memory a week later.

When to send, and when to stop waiting

Thanksgiving is the one dinner where guests have competing invitations from blood relatives, so early beats clever. Four weeks gives a cousin time to find a flight. Two weeks is fine for a local table. Inside of ten days, stop messaging and start calling, because a link sitting unread in a group chat is not an answer.

The useful habit is to put a reply-by date on the invite and then treat it as real. Pick a date seven days before Thanksgiving, which is the Thursday you order or buy the bird.

1. Four weeks out: send the invite if any guest flies or drives more than three hours.
2. Two weeks out: send it if the guest list is local.
3. Ten days out: message non-repliers one at a time, by name.
4. Seven days out: lock the count, treat Maybe as no, and buy for the confirmed number plus two.
5. Four days out: move a 16 pound frozen turkey to the fridge, which needs 24 hours per four pounds to thaw.
6. Two days out: resend the address, the parking note and the arrival time. Most guests did not scroll that far the first time.

The six lines an invite needs

Write two times, not one. Guests read a single time and arrive at it, so if the invite says 2:00 pm somebody is at the door at 1:50 while you have your hands in the potatoes. Doors at two, dinner at four buys you an hour of grace and tells late arrivals they have not ruined anything.

Everything else on the page is there to stop a text message landing on Thursday morning. Parking, the buzzer code, whether the dog is friendly, whether to bring a dish.

• The date with the weekday on it: Thursday, November 26.
• Two times: when the door opens and when food hits the table.
• The street address, plus parking or the buzzer code.
• Whether to bring something, and what.
• Who is invited: names, or the word family, or a plus-one line.
• A reply-by date and one way to reply.

How many people fit at your table

Twenty-four inches of table edge per person is the tight minimum and 30 inches is comfortable. Count chairs before you count guests, out loud, including the two folding ones in the hall closet. The number you land on is your guest limit, and it is easier to defend on October 30 than on November 24.

If you are two seats short, a 30 by 48 inch folding table at one end adds two places and eats about three feet of floor. Leave 36 inches behind each chair so people can get up without the whole bench shuffling.

• 48-inch round: four adults, five at a squeeze.
• 60-inch round: eight adults.
• 60 by 36 inch rectangle: six adults, two per side and one at each end.
• 72 by 36 inch rectangle: six in comfort, eight tight.
• Card table for the under-tens: four kids, and it frees four adult seats.
• Serve from the kitchen counter rather than the table and you get back about 18 inches per person.

Asking about food people can't eat

Do not ask whether anyone has dietary requirements. You will get nothing major from the guest who cannot eat gluten, because they are being polite. Ask for the specific thing instead: if there is something you can't eat, type it in the note when you reply. Naming an example in the invite gets you real answers.

Then plan one dish that covers several cases at once. A tray of roasted carrots, squash and onion with olive oil instead of butter feeds the vegetarian, the dairy-free guest and the person who is skipping the stuffing. Keep butter off the green beans and put a dish of it on the table for anyone who wants it.

On a Bringalong invite the dietary note sits next to the guest's name in your dashboard, and you can export the whole list to CSV and take it shopping.

Share the link where your family already talks

Bringalong does not email or text your guests. You copy the invite link and send it yourself through WhatsApp, iMessage, Messenger, Telegram or email, which means it arrives from you rather than from a notification address that lands in spam. For the aunt who does not use messaging apps, print the QR code and tape it inside a card.

The manage link stays with you and nobody else. It shows who replied, the running count of adults and plus-ones, the notes, a CSV export, an edit screen and a cancel button if a storm closes the roads.

• Family group chat: paste the link and the date in the same message.
• Email for older relatives: the page opens in a browser with no sign-up.
• A printed card: the QR code scans straight to the invite.
• Direct messages to the three or four people who decide what the rest of the family does.
• Guests add the date to their own calendar from the invite with .ics, Google or Outlook.

The guests who go quiet

There will be two or three. Do not re-send the link to the group, because the people who already answered are the only ones who read it. Message the quiet ones separately with a question that has two possible answers: are you two coming Thursday, I am buying the bird Saturday. Closed questions get replies.

If someone asks on Tuesday whether they can bring a sister and a boyfriend, the answer depends on chairs, not on turkey. A 16 pound bird stretches to 14 eaters once you add a tray of potatoes. Two more chairs in a room that holds ten is the harder problem, and it is fine to say the table is full and invite them for dessert at seven.