What Not to Put in a Marriage Biodata

A marriage biodata is not a document you send to one family. You send it to one family, they forward it to an aunt, she sends it to a broker, and the broker keeps a folder of two hundred of them. Every biodata you have ever sent is still sitting on somebody's phone.

That is the normal, working life of the document, and it is fine. It only becomes a problem when the page carries things that should not travel that far. The marriage biodata format guide covers what to include. This one covers what to leave off, and what to write instead.

Your full address

Leave the house number, street and pin code off. Write the city and the state.

A family deciding whether to reply needs to know where you live so they can work out distance and whether the match is practical. They do not need to be able to arrive at your door. City and state answer the question that matters at this stage, and the full address can be given later to the one family the conversation continues with.

Write: Kothrud, Pune, Maharashtra. Not the flat number.

Government identity numbers

Aadhaar, PAN, passport number, driving licence, voter ID. None of these belong on a biodata in any form, including a photograph of a document.

There is no stage of a marriage conversation where a stranger needs your Aadhaar number, and the number is the key to a large amount of other information about you. People do put them on, usually because they copied a job biodata template that asked for identity proof. Delete the row.

Your employee ID and office details

The company name and your role belong on the page. The employee code, the office address, the desk phone and the official email do not.

An office email on a biodata means every forward of that document carries a working address into your employer's inbox system, and it tends to reach your colleagues eventually. Use a personal email you are happy to give out, and a mobile number you can change if you need to.

An exact salary figure

State the role and the employer. Leave the number off.

Three reasons this holds up. A figure invites a negotiation before anyone has met. It dates quickly, so a biodata written eighteen months ago now misstates your income to everyone who reads it. And a family that is seriously considering the match will ask about it directly at the point where it matters, which is well after the first reply.

Write: Systems Engineer at an IT services company in Pune, six years of experience. That gives a family enough to place you.

Anything about a third person who did not agree to be on it

Parents' names and occupations are conventional and expected. Beyond that, be careful.

A sibling's phone number, a sibling's income, a relative's medical condition, a photograph that includes somebody else's children. These are other people's details on a document that will be forwarded hundreds of times, and they did not get asked. Keep the family section to names, occupations and where they live.

Photographs that carry more than your face

A clear recent portrait is expected and there is no point pretending otherwise. What to avoid is everything else that can sit in the frame.

• Your house from the outside, especially with the number visible
• A car with a readable number plate
• Your office, your ID card on a lanyard, a visible company logo
• Children, yours or anyone else's
• A geotagged image sent as a raw camera file

Send the biodata as a PDF rather than a photo of a printed page or a loose JPG. A PDF strips the camera metadata that a shared image often still carries, and it holds its layout when it is forwarded.

Medical history

If there is something a partner genuinely needs to know before agreeing to a marriage, it belongs in a conversation with the family that is seriously considering the match. It does not belong on a page that a broker will keep in a folder with two hundred others.

The exception people ask about is a disability that is visible or that affects daily life, where stating it plainly on the biodata saves everyone from a conversation that was always going to happen. That is a reasonable call and it is yours to make. A condition that is managed, historical or private is different, and there is no obligation to publish it.

Your social media handles

Instagram and Facebook handles on a biodata give a stranger your photographs, your location history and your friends list before they have even replied. Some people add them deliberately so families can see more. If you do that, look at the account first as a stranger would, and check what the last thirty posts give away.

Horoscope details

Time and place of birth are conventional in a large share of Indian marriage biodatas and leaving them blank causes real friction, so this is not a security recommendation. It is worth knowing what you are giving out. Time and place of birth are common identity verification questions.

The practical middle is to keep them on the version you send to families and matrimony contacts, and leave them off any version you post publicly on a website or a group where anyone can download it.

What this leaves you with

A good biodata is one page, carries your name, photo, date of birth, education, work, family, city and one contact number, and nothing that would trouble you if it were printed and left on a train. That is roughly the standard a document gets held to once you accept that it will be forwarded past everyone you chose to send it to.

The biodata maker asks only for the fields that belong on the page, so the easiest way to avoid most of this is to fill the form and not add rows to it. Everything you type stays in your browser, and the PDF is free with no account.