Inviting wedding guests abroad: time zones

Imagine you are an aunt in Toronto reading a WhatsApp message that says “muhurtham 9:00 am”. You know it is Indian time. You then spend two minutes with a calculator, get it wrong because of daylight saving, and message your cousin to confirm. Multiply that by every guest overseas and you have a lot of avoidable messages.

The fix is small. Show the time in their time zone. Then add a button to put it in their calendar. Then, if you want them there in spirit, share a livestream.

Time zones, without the arithmetic

India uses one time zone, UTC+5:30, and does not change its clocks. The gap to other places moves around, because other countries do change theirs:

• UAE: India is 1.5 hours ahead, all year.
• Singapore: India is 2.5 hours behind, all year.
• UK: India is 4.5 hours ahead when the UK is on summer time, 5.5 when it is on winter time.
• US East Coast: India is 9.5 hours ahead in summer, 10.5 in winter.
• US West Coast: India is 12.5 or 13.5 hours ahead.
• Australia (Sydney): India is 4.5 or 5.5 hours behind, depending on the season.

A 9 am muhurtham in India, then, is 10:30 pm the night before on the US East Coast. That is the sort of thing a guest should not have to work out.

On our invitations, each event is shown in Indian time, and a guest viewing from another time zone also sees the time in their own zone beneath it. If your own invitation does not do that, add the key local times to your message to overseas guests by hand.

Calendar buttons

A calendar link saves more mistakes than any other small feature. A guest taps once and the event lands in their calendar with the venue, the date and the right time converted for them. Every event on our invitations has a Google Calendar link and a downloadable calendar file, so Apple and Outlook users are covered too.

Remember a wedding often has several events. Give each its own button so a guest can add only what they plan to attend.

Give them time

This is where families overseas feel most ignored: they hear about the wedding six weeks before and the flights cost double. Aim to tell them four to six months ahead. A casual message plus a save-the-date is enough, and the formal invitation can follow. The wedding invitation timeline lays out the whole sequence.

The livestream question

Many families now stream the muhurtham for people who cannot travel. A few things make it go better:

1. Say what is streamed. The ceremony, the reception, or both? Guests can plan around the time.
2. Put the link in the invitation. Not in a message the week of. On our invitations you can add a livestream link from a short list of known hosts (YouTube, Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and a few others) and nothing else, so an invitation cannot send guests to an unknown site.
3. Test the stream the day before. On the venue’s actual network. Have someone you trust running it.
4. Name a person. A relative who watches the chat and greets people by name, so overseas guests feel included.

Wording for guests abroad

Keep the message simple and practical:

Hi Priya, the wedding is on 14 February in Madurai, with the muhurtham at 9 am IST (that is 10:30 pm on the 13th for you). The link has every event in your time zone, a calendar button, and the livestream link for the muhurtham. We would love to see you, and we will video-call you in if you cannot come.

More message options are in WhatsApp wedding invitation messages you can copy.

See how it works

The page for families abroad explains the options in more detail, and you can look at any design as a live sample on your phone to check how the times appear.