Hindu wedding invitation, every event on one link

Designs for this

A Hindu wedding is not one event, and the invite should not pretend it is

Most printed cards squeeze four or five ceremonies onto one panel, in small type, with one address for everything. Then the family spends a week on the phone explaining that the haldi is at the house and the phere are at the farmhouse.

Each ceremony here is its own card on the invite, with its own day, its own start time, its own venue and its own map link. A guest taps the one they are coming to and gets directions to the right place.

• Roka or engagement, if you are inviting the same guests
• Haldi, usually at home and usually in the morning
• Mehndi, often the same day as the sangeet
• Sangeet, the event most guests plan their travel around
• The wedding itself, with the muhurat time stated exactly
• Reception, often a different city and a different guest list

The wording families expect

A Hindu invitation traditionally opens with a Ganesh invocation, then names the elders inviting, then the couple. Keeping that order matters more to the family than the design does, and every one of those lines is a field you fill in.

If your family lists the gotra, or invites in the name of a grandparent who has passed, there is room for it. Nothing is fixed except the layout.

The muhurat problem, solved

Hindu weddings are set by the panchang, and the auspicious window can be narrow and at an odd hour. Printed cards are ordered weeks ahead, so a shifted muhurat means a sticker, a phone call or a reprint.

You can change the time on a live invite and every guest who opens the link sees the new one, including the guests who opened it yesterday. That is the single most useful thing about not printing.

Common questions