Wedding website, e-invite or PDF card?

Most Indian weddings now go out on WhatsApp. The question is what the message carries: a card, a video, or a link. Here is what each one does, honestly, and when each is enough.

The PDF or image card

The printed card, photographed or exported. One image, forwarded to every family group.

It works when the wedding is one event in one place, and everyone knows the city. It costs almost nothing if you already have a printed design.

Where it falls short: it can’t change. When the sangeet moves from 7 to 8, a corrected card goes out and two versions live in every chat forever. Guests zoom in to read the address, and nobody can reply to a picture.

The e-invite

A thirty-second video or an animated card with your names, the date and a song. Made in an afternoon by hundreds of studios, usually for a few hundred to a few thousand rupees, or free from a template.

It works as the announcement: it sets the mood and gets forwarded. Older relatives love it.

Where it falls short: it is still a broadcast. It can’t hold a map, a dress code per event, hotel details for outstation guests, or a reply. And it is a template, so the next wedding in the family group looks the same.

The wedding website

One link. Each event on its own page: the date, the time, the venue with a map that opens in the guest’s phone, what to wear, and a reply form at the end. Travel and stay for guests coming from outside. Your story, if you want to tell it.

It works when the wedding has more than one event, guests in more than one city, or when plans will move (they always do). The link stays the same; the page updates.

Where it falls short: it takes longer than a card, and it needs an opening that matches the card and the video so it doesn’t feel like a form. Free builders exist, mostly American, built around one ceremony and a registry. Indian builders offer templates from about a thousand rupees a year. A bespoke site, designed for your wedding, is quoted per wedding.

What most couples end up doing

All three, in order. The save-the-date as a card or a short video, two to three months out. The website link when the schedule is fixed, about six weeks out, in the same message as the formal invitation. Reminders a week before, as a WhatsApp status with the link.

The website is the only one of the three that answers a question at 11 pm the night before the mehendi.

A quick way to decide

• One event, one city, under a hundred guests: a good card is enough.
• Two or more events, or guests travelling: a website, with the card as the announcement.
• A destination wedding: a website, early, with travel and stay on it before anything else.