A text to your wedding guests fits 160 characters in a single SMS segment - 153 per part once it splits into several - and one emoji or curly quote flips the whole message to UCS-2 encoding, where the limits drop to 70 and 67. Everything below shows you exactly where your text crosses the line, and whether to cut it back or let it split.
SMS is a 1980s protocol with a hard packet size: 160 GSM-7 characters. Anything longer is sliced into parts of 153 - the missing seven characters pay for the hidden header that tells your guest's phone how to stitch the parts back together. Your phone's keyboard counts letters, not segments, so it never warns you. Two pairs below: the same message over the line, then under it.
Hi {GuestFirstName}! Quick note from Nora & Will about Saturday parking - the venue lot is tiny, so we'd recommend the garage on Pearl Street, which is about a two minute walk from the main entrance. See you there!
Hi {GuestFirstName}! Parking for Saturday, from Nora & Will: the venue lot is tiny, so use the Pearl Street garage - a 2 minute walk from the main entrance.
Hi {GuestFirstName}! Our wedding website is live with the schedule, hotel block, parking and the full weekend plan: https://www.noraandwillgetmarried.com/guest-information/details
Hi {GuestFirstName}! Our wedding website is live with the schedule, hotel block, parking and the full weekend plan: {Link:wedding-website}
The free planner meters every message the way carriers do - GSM-7 or UCS-2, 160 or 70 - and its emoji toggle shows you the flip live before a single guest sees a split text.
SMS has two alphabets. The small one, GSM-7, covers plain letters, digits and basic punctuation and fits 160 characters per segment. One character outside it - any emoji, or the curly quotes and em dashes that Notes, Word and Google Docs insert automatically - re-encodes the ENTIRE message as UCS-2, and the limit collapses to 70 (67 per part). The second pair below is the same length in both versions; only the punctuation differs.
See you Saturday 🎉 Doors open 3:30pm at the Grange Hall and the ceremony starts at 4pm sharp. Free parking in the north lot.
See you Saturday! Doors open 3:30pm at the Grange Hall and the ceremony starts at 4pm sharp. Free parking in the north lot.
We can’t wait for Saturday — doors open at 3:30pm and we’ll begin at 4pm. Dinner and dancing to follow at the Grange Hall.
We can't wait for Saturday - doors open at 3:30pm and we'll begin at 4pm. Dinner and dancing to follow at the Grange Hall.
Fitting one segment doesn't mean sounding like a parking ticket. The trick is cutting the wind-up, not the warmth: drop the 'we just wanted to let you know that', keep the 'we can't wait to celebrate with you'. Both pairs below lose more than half their characters and none of their voice.
Hi {GuestFirstName}! We can hardly believe it, but tomorrow is finally the big day. We just wanted to remind you that doors open at 3:30pm at the Grange Hall and that the ceremony itself will begin at 4pm sharp. We are so excited to see you there and to celebrate with you!
Hi {GuestFirstName} - tomorrow's the day! Doors 3:30pm at the Grange Hall, ceremony 4pm sharp. We can't wait to celebrate with you.
Hi {GuestFirstName}, it's Nora & Will! We're finalizing numbers with our caterer this week and realized we haven't heard back from you yet. When you have a moment, could you let us know whether {PartyMembers} will be able to make it? Here's the link: {{rsvpLink}}
Hi {GuestFirstName}! Caterer deadline this week - can {PartyMembers} make it? Two taps and you're done: {{rsvpLink}}
Not every text needs surgery. A scheduled, information-dense message - the week-of rundown, travel details - can run two or three segments: modern phones reassemble the parts invisibly, and nobody minds a longer text they were expecting. The rule flips for urgent, day-of messages: parts can arrive seconds apart or even out of order, and a change of plan that lands half-first is worse than no text at all. Urgent means one segment, always.
Hi {GuestFirstName} - wedding week! The rundown: 1. Doors open 3:30pm Saturday, ceremony 4pm 2. Free parking in the north lot 3. Shuttles leave the Hartley Inn at 3pm 4. Forecast is sunny, but the lawn is soft - flat shoes welcome Everything else: {Link:week-of-details}
Update from Nora & Will: tonight's welcome drinks move indoors to the Hartley Inn lobby - same time, 7pm. Reply here with any questions.
The before-and-after pairs above all use the same five moves. Apply them in this order and most two-segment texts come back under 160 without losing their voice.
'We just wanted to remind you that doors open at 3:30pm' is 52 characters carrying 25 characters of information. Start at the fact - 'Doors open 3:30pm' - and spend the savings on one genuinely warm line at the end.
'3:30pm' costs 6 characters; 'half past three in the afternoon' costs 32. Times, dates and distances should be digits in a text - save the written-out elegance for the invitation.
A text's job is to deliver one fact and one pointer. If you're explaining the shuttle schedule inside the message, move it to the website and send the short link - a {Link:...} token costs about 20 characters where a full URL can cost 60 or more.
'From Nora & Will' buys recognition for 16 characters. 'With love and excitement from the future Mr. & Mrs. Calloway' spends 61 on the same job. Until guests save your number, sign every text - just cheaply.
Every edit changes the count, and a pasted apostrophe can undo all your trimming invisibly. The meter below counts exactly the way carriers do - make it the last thing you look at before scheduling.
Every one of these produces a text that looked fine on your screen and arrived split on your guests'. They are counting errors, not writing errors - which is why a meter beats a rule of thumb.
You counted 140 characters and it sent as three messages. The emoji flipped the encoding: in UCS-2 the budget is 70, split messages carry 67 per part, and that emoji itself counts as two. Your keyboard counted letters; the carrier counted units. Either drop the emoji or accept that the real limit just became 70.
Notes, Word and Google Docs silently convert straight quotes to curly ones and double hyphens to em dashes - characters that look nearly identical but sit outside GSM-7. A message drafted in a notes app can flip to UCS-2 with nothing visibly 'special' in it. Paste into the meter before you schedule; it will name the encoding it sees.
Concatenated SMS is reassembled by the receiving phone, and it usually works - but the parts travel as separate messages, and delivery order is not guaranteed. On a congested wedding-day network or an older handset, part two can land first. Fine for a rundown; disastrous for 'ceremony moved to 5pm'. That is the whole case for keeping urgent texts to one segment.
Type or paste any message and the meter counts it exactly as carriers do - GSM-7 or UCS-2, with the encoding flagged and the segment count live as you type. Then hit the emoji toggle and watch one character move the limit from 160 to 70. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.
94 of 160 GSM-7 characters · sends as 1 segment · measured with tokens resolved
Private by design: this planner runs entirely on this page — nothing you enter leaves your browser. Your names, date and venue only fill in the preview above, and they're gone when you close the tab.
Each segment is billed as a separate message. If you send through an SMS service, you pay per segment, so a three-part text to 140 guests is billed as 420 messages, not 140. Guests on modern unlimited plans won't notice, but anyone on a pay-per-text or limited plan is charged per part too - one more reason day-of logistics deserve a single segment.
No - iMessage and RCS travel as data, so there is no 160-character segment to worry about and no emoji penalty. But you can't choose your guests' channel: a message to a mixed guest list falls back to SMS for anyone without the right phone, network or setting. Write to the SMS limit and every version of your text arrives clean; write to the iMessage limit and the SMS fallback splits.
A 140-character text in plain GSM-7 is one segment - 20 characters to spare. Add a single emoji and the whole message re-encodes as UCS-2: the budget drops to 67 per part, the emoji itself counts as two units, and 142 units divided by 67 is three parts. One character, one segment to three. Remove the emoji and it's one message again.
Every character of the URL counts - SMS has no way to hide a link behind clickable text. That's the case for short links: a full wedding-website URL can run 60+ characters, while a {Link:...} short link resolves to about 20, often the whole difference between one segment and two. Put the link last either way, where a thumb expects it.
Paste it into the meter on this page - it applies the real GSM-7/UCS-2 rules (160/153 and 70/67), flags the encoding, and shows the segment count as you type. Phone keyboards and word processors count letters, which is a different number the moment an emoji or pasted punctuation is involved. The free planner runs the same meter on every message in your send plan.
Text My Wedding schedules every send on its date, resolves the merge tokens per guest, and collects the replies — so seven or eight dated texts never have to leave your notes app by hand.
