An Indian wedding website checklist

The five things a guest needs

1. 1Names, the date, and the city. In the first screen, before any scrolling.
2. 2Each function with its own date, start time and venue. Not "the wedding weekend" — the muhurtham window, the reception time, the mehendi.
3. 3A map link per venue that opens in the guest's own phone. An address alone is not directions.
4. 4The RSVP, asking for a headcount per function.
5. 5A phone number for someone who is not the couple — a sibling or cousin who can answer on the day.

Getting the functions right

Indian weddings run three to seven functions across two or three days, and different guests are invited to different ones. The website has to make that legible or you will spend the fortnight before answering the same question.

• Name each function the way your family names it — muhurtham, nikah, nuptial mass, haldi, mehendi, sangeet, walima, reception.
• Print the muhurtham as the window it is, not a single time.
• Give the dress code per function if there is one. Guests want to be told.
• Say which functions are open to everyone and which are close family, plainly and warmly.
• Give a start time people can act on. If the invitation says 10:30 and things really begin at 11:15, guests learn to arrive late — including at the one where it matters.

For guests coming from abroad

If any part of your list is flying in, these five lines save more messages than everything else on the site combined.

• All times marked IST, explicitly.
• The nearest airport, with its code, and how far it is from the venue.
• Which days they need to be in town for — "arrive Wednesday, leave Sunday" is more useful than a list of events.
• A hotel or two near the venue, with a rough price band.
• Whether anything is being arranged for them — airport pickup, a block booking — and if not, say so, so they book their own.

Worth adding, in this order

• A countdown to the main ceremony. Frivolous, and guests genuinely enjoy it.
• How you met — short. Three paragraphs, not thirty.
• A small photo gallery. Eight good photographs beat sixty.
• The wedding hashtag, if you have one.
• Add-to-calendar for each function, so the reminder lives in the guest's own phone.
• A note about gifts, if you have a preference. Phrase it as a preference, not an instruction.
• Parking and directions detail — which gate, which side of the building.

What to leave off

• Your home address, publicly. Give it to the people who need it, privately.
• Full contact details for the whole family. One number is enough.
• Anything that has to be updated daily. It will not be.
• Autoplaying music. Guests open this in an office, on a bus, and at 6 a.m.
• A long "our story" that pushes the timings below the fold on a phone.
• Anything a stranger finding the page should not know. Wedding pages get forwarded.

Before you send it

1. 1Open it on a mid-range Android phone on mobile data, not on your laptop over wi-fi.
2. 2Tap every map link and check each one lands on the right building, not the right area.
3. 3Submit the RSVP yourself and confirm the reply arrives somewhere you will see it.
4. 4Check every date and time against the printed card. Transcription errors are the most common fault and the most embarrassing.
5. 5Send it to two relatives — one who is comfortable with phones and one who is not — and watch what each does.
6. 6Check it in every language you are publishing it in.

The fifth step is the one that finds the real problems. Watching someone who does not use the internet much try to find the venue on your page tells you more in two minutes than any amount of previewing.