How to Make a Wedding Invitation Online for an Indian Shaadi: What to Gather, 15 Steps and Three Routes

This guide follows the order the work really happens, from details to design, testing, sending and follow-up, then compares three ways to get it made, including ours. In Hindi, शादी का डिजिटल कार्ड कैसे बनाएं covers the three kinds of digital card and what each costs.

What do you need before you start?

Gather six things in one place and have an elder from each side check them before anyone opens an app: the mistakes that cause trouble on an e-invite are in the details, not the design.

• Names: the couple's, their parents' and any elders' you will print, spelt as each family wants them, in both scripts if the invitation is bilingual. Ira or Eera, इरा or ईरा: ask, don't guess.
• The muhurat or ceremony time from your pandit ji, and each function's date, time and venue, with a map pin for every venue.
• A contact number from each side.
• The language: Hindi, English, both, or another such as Punjabi.
• The guest list, each name as it should read (Sharma Parivar, Bua ji & Phupha ji), marked with the functions each is asked to.
• Photos, if any, chosen by the couple.

How do you make a wedding invitation online, step by step?

Making a wedding invitation online takes fifteen steps, and only the first two are about how it looks: the rest are names, dates, places, testing and follow-up.

Step 1: Decide the format

An online wedding invitation comes in four formats: an image, a PDF, a video, or a link that opens like a card in the phone's browser, often called an invitation website. An image suits one function at home; for five functions at three venues, a link with a map for each function and one reply button, which can be corrected after sending, starts to matter.

How each format behaves on a guest's phone has its own guide, and our wedding e-invites show a full shaadi on a link. If the invitation is weeks away, send a save-the-date message first.

Step 2: Choose a design

Choose a design by how it reads on a phone, not in a gallery on a laptop: text large enough for elders, Hindi lettering that works, and room for your name lists. Put the date and city where a guest sees them first, and match the colours of any cards you print. Twenty-five Indian wedding invitation ideas shows the designs, with five checks for whether one reads on a phone.

Step 3: Add the couple's names

Write the couple's names exactly as each family wants them, in every script, and check the Hindi and English against each other. On a Hindi card the inviting family's own child comes first, with चि. before the groom's name and सौ.कां. before the bride's; the Hindi shaadi card format gives the full order.

Step 4: Add the family and host names

Decide who is inviting: on most Hindi cards it is the parents, or the grandfather as head of the family, under विनीत, with the elders whose blessings you name under शुभाशीर्वाद. Punjabi and Urdu cards use their own words, so follow your elders.

The meanings are in विनीत, दर्शनाभिलाषी, चि. और सौ.कां. का मतलब, and a Punjabi card's words in the Punjabi wedding card matter. On a phone, fifteen names under दर्शनाभिलाषी mean screens of scrolling, so keep each list to the names the family would be hurt to leave out.

Step 5: Set the date

Write the date with its weekday, such as Friday, 19 February 2027, check the weekday on a calendar, and copy any tithi exactly as your pandit ji wrote it. If the phere fall after midnight, the card needs two dates; the wording for phere after midnight is in our checklist.

Step 6: List every ceremony

List every function you are inviting guests to, in order, under the names your family uses: tilak, haldi, mehndi, mahila sangeet, baraat, jaimala and phere, reception. For guests from other communities, add a few words in brackets: aashirwad samaroh (the reception, where guests bless the couple). Decide now who comes to what; step 11 needs it.

Step 7: Add venues and timings

Give every function a venue name, an area, a landmark and the time guests should arrive ("from 7 pm", not when the pandit ji begins), and for the baraat, where and when to gather. Write times one way throughout (7:30 pm or सायं 7:30 बजे), with IST for relatives abroad.

Step 8: Add a map for each venue

The surest map link is one you make yourself in Google Maps, from a pin on the gate guests will use. Google's Maps Help gives the same steps for Android and iPhone, checked on 4 October 2026:

1. Open the Google Maps app.
2. Search for the venue, or touch and hold the map to drop a pin.
3. Tap the place's name or address at the bottom of the screen.
4. Tap Share, and copy the link or send it to whoever is making the invitation.

A farmhouse or village home may have no address Google knows. Use a plus code, which Google describes as a simple digital address that can mark one entrance of a building; Google's plus codes page shows how to copy one from a dropped pin.

Open each link on a phone that has never searched for the place: it should land on the entrance, not the back wall. On an image, the map link goes in the message you send with it.

Step 9: Ask for replies, if you need them

Ask for replies only if you will use the numbers, and only for what you need: yes or no, how many, which functions, by a date that leaves time for the caterer's final count. An image or PDF needs a name and number to reply to; a link can have a reply button. More in how to ask for replies on a wedding invitation.

Step 10: Add photos or a story, if you want them

Photos and a short story of how the couple met are optional; let the couple choose three to six. Invitations get forwarded, so pick ones you would be happy for a stranger at the reception to have seen.

Step 11: Personalise for each guest

Personalising means each guest sees their own name, and only the functions and the language meant for them. With an image or video that means a separate file per guest; with a link, the guest's name can sit in the link and appear on the cover.

Write names the way they are said at home: Bua ji & Phupha ji, not Mr and Mrs Agarwal. A forwarded personal link still greets the first guest, so send the plain link to family groups.

Step 12: Test on Android and iPhone

Test the finished invitation on at least one Android phone and one iPhone, over mobile data, before any guest sees it: send the first copy to two relatives, one with an older, cheaper phone. From a template app, look at the Hindi first: if the ि of निवासी sits after its letter, the र् of दर्शनाभिलाषी is not a small mark on top, half letters such as क्ष and श्र come apart, or any letter shows as an empty box, the app cannot set Hindi properly.

Then go through the checks to run before you send, from names and weekdays to the WhatsApp preview, every map pin and a test reply.

Step 13: Share on WhatsApp

Share it the way you would hand over a card: a call to the closest elders first, then each guest in their own chat with their name in the first line, and family groups last. For etiquette and a missing link preview, see how to send wedding invitations on WhatsApp; for the message to type above it, WhatsApp invitation messages for every relative; for timing, when to send wedding invitations.

Step 14: Correct mistakes and changed details

Correct the invitation first, then tell the guests it affects, in one short message, what changed. A new image, PDF or video leaves the old one in every chat, so mark the new one "Updated". The message to send is in what to do when a venue or time changes.

Step 15: Follow up

Once the invitation is out, one person keeps the list of replies, chases the guests who have not answered and reminds everyone before the functions. How to count replies and chase the ones that never come has a tally sheet and the words to use; reminder messages for a week before and the day before cover the rest.

Template app, designer or ready-made link: which route suits you?

A template app you fill yourself suits one or two functions and a tight budget, a designer or studio working to order suits a family that wants a look nobody else has, and a ready-made invitation link suits a shaadi with several functions, venues and out-of-town guests.

What each route costs, watermark fees included, is in what a digital wedding invitation costs.

How does it work with Sadar Nimantran?

Sadar Nimantran makes ready-made invitation links: you choose a design from our samples and send us the details, and we put them into that design and send you the link.

1. Pick a design on the samples page and open it on your phone.
2. Try it with your names on any sample: type the couple's names, date and city, and the cover shows them. Nothing reaches us unless you tap I want this design and press send in WhatsApp.
3. Send the details through the five short questions, which open WhatsApp with your answers written out, or message us on WhatsApp at +91 94119 55202. Your note of details is what we need.
4. Check it. A design from the samples is ready within a day of your details arriving; go through it with step 12.
5. Make each guest's link. Paste your guest list into the link maker we give you, one name to a line, and each name gets its own link and a ready message. Untick a function and every link it then makes leaves it out, so make colleagues' links in a batch of their own with only the reception ticked. The WhatsApp button opens the message; you pick the contact and press send. The list and the ticks stay in your phone's browser; nothing is sent to us.
6. Tell us when something changes. We update the same link, and everyone who has it sees the new details.

Every function has its own date, time and venue, a dress note if you want one, a Directions button that opens Google Maps and an add-to-calendar button. Replies come to your own WhatsApp, not to us; there is no dashboard or tally sheet, so you count them in WhatsApp.

There is a Bigger text switch for elders, and the card can be in Hindi, English or both; we also make cards in other languages, such as Punjabi. What each package includes, up to a Bespoke design drawn from a blank page, is on our packages page.

What mistakes do families make with online invitations?

The mistakes families make with online invitations are usually about order and facts, not design:

• Designing before the details are final, so an old draft escapes into someone's phone.
• Sending the draft to the family group before both sides have checked it.
• A printed card and an online invitation that disagree on a time.
• The wrong functions on the wrong invitations: office colleagues at the haldi.

Sadar Nimantran (sadarnimantran.in) is a studio that makes animated invitation websites for North Indian family functions; it does not print cards, and apart from the save-the-date and invitation film in its Bespoke package, it does not make image, PDF or video invitations.