Tamil and English wedding invitation design tips

I have seen a lot of bilingual invitations. The best ones do not look like two documents stuck together. The worst ones have Tamil that is slightly too small, slightly too tight, or quietly broken. Most of the difference comes from a few decisions that are easy to get right once you know them.

Start with real Tamil text

This is the most important point, and the one that catches people most often. Tamil text should be Unicode. That means it is stored as proper characters that every modern phone, browser and app can show with any Tamil font.

The older way, used by some print shops and older software, is a font like Bamini or similar, where a Tamil word is typed on English keys and looks Tamil only because of the font. Send that as text and it arrives as gibberish like “tpUhfk” on a phone that does not have that font. If your Tamil was made that way, convert it to Unicode first, or ask the designer to retype it.

There is a bonus: Unicode text can be searched, copied and read aloud by screen readers.

Give Tamil room

Tamil letters are visually taller and rounder than Latin ones, and many have marks above and below. If you set Tamil at the same size and line spacing as English, it looks cramped and the marks collide.

• Line spacing: more than for English. If English is 1.4, try 1.6 to 1.8 for Tamil.
• Size: Tamil often needs to be one or two steps larger to look the same weight as English.
• Weight: very thin Tamil fonts vanish on a small screen. Pick a regular or medium weight for body text.

Keep each language in its own block

A sentence that switches from Tamil to English mid-line is hard to read, and it breaks in unexpected places on narrow screens. Better:

• A blessing in Tamil, followed by its English version below.
• Event names in both languages, one under the other.
• Addresses in whichever language the venue’s signboard uses, with the other beneath.

Names are a special case. Print them in both scripts, but make sure the Tamil spelling is the one the family actually uses.

Line breaks

Tamil words should not be split in the middle of a letter cluster. If you are laying text out by hand, check each line on a phone, because a break that looks fine on a laptop may split a word on a narrow screen. A good page lets the text wrap naturally and checks it at several widths.

Order and hierarchy

Pick an order and keep it:

• Tamil first gives the invitation a traditional tone, and suits the blessing.
• English first can suit practical details like venue and dress.
• Do not alternate randomly. A guest should always know where to look.

Proof-reading is not optional

Of everything here, this is the step I would defend hardest. A bilingual invitation goes to people who read Tamil every day, including elders who will notice an awkward phrase immediately. A machine translation or a quick check by someone who only half reads the script is not enough. Have a native reader go through every line, including names, dates in the Tamil calendar format if you use them, and the wording of the blessing.

On our own site, any Tamil text is written or checked by a native speaker, and we do not machine-translate. For samples of wording you can adapt, see Tamil wedding invitation wording samples.

Test it like a guest

Before you send, open the page on:

1. An ordinary mid-range Android phone.
2. A slow connection.
3. Your grandmother’s phone, if she will be reading it. Large fonts on, to see how it copes.

If the Tamil looks right there, it will look right everywhere.

Next steps

Read more about Tamil wedding invitations on our site, see the languages we support, or try your own names on a design in the customiser. The same care applies to Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam and the other scripts we support.