English and French, written properly

Many Canadian weddings have guests who read English, guests who read French, and some who read both. A wedding website that only speaks one of them makes part of the family feel like guests of a lesser rank.

We have seen it happen. An aunt asks someone to read the invitation to her. A grandfather replies by phone because the form did not make sense. Nobody complains, but everyone notices.

Both languages, same care

Every page of Zendegi.Studio exists in English and in Canadian French. Not most pages, and not the important ones first: every page, every button, every email.

The French follows Canadian usage. That shows in small choices:

• courriel rather than e-mail, and texto rather than SMS;
• vous when we speak to the couple;
• dates and times written the way they are in Québec, like samedi 19 juin 2027 à 15 h;
• prices written 125 $, not $125;
• French punctuation, with the small space before a colon or a question mark.

None of these is dramatic on its own. Together, they are the difference between a site that reads naturally in French and one that only gets by.

Switch languages with the globe at the top of any page. The site remembers your choice the next time you come back.

What your guests see

Your save the date shows the date in full, in the language of the person opening it. A guest who reads French sees samedi 19 juin 2027; a guest who reads English sees Saturday, June 19, 2027. Nobody has to choose a language before the scene starts.

The emails we send follow the same rule. Every one of them exists in English and in French, chosen by the reader’s language, with the same care in both.

Why we start with these two

English and French come first because they are Canada’s two official languages, and because together they cover most of the guests at most Canadian weddings. They are also the two languages we can write ourselves, to the standard we want. We would rather ship two languages done properly than ten done badly.

And the other languages

Many families speak Persian, Punjabi, Spanish, Arabic, Tagalog or Mandarin at home. Their grandparents deserve to read their invitation without help, too.

Those languages are next on our list. When we add one, it will follow the same rule: written by someone who speaks it, checked in the real pages, and finished before it ships.

If something reads wrong

If you find a sentence that sounds off, tell us. We fix wording the same way we fix bugs, because for a wedding, the words are part of the product.