The One-Page Rule: Formatting a Biodata People Actually Read
VivahAI Editorial · 10 August 2026 · 6 min read
Content gets all the attention, but format is what decides whether the content is read. A biodata is a document with an unusual life: it is opened on a phone, forwarded to relatives, printed by exactly one aunt, and judged in the first screenful.
Order of sections
Put the identifying facts where a thumb stops first. A reader scrolling a WhatsApp preview sees roughly the top third of page one — that space should carry your photo, name, date of birth, height and city. Everything else can wait.
- Photo and name
- Personal details (DOB, age, height, religion, mother tongue, city)
- Education and career
- About me
- Family
- Horoscope details, if you use them
- Contact
Contact goes last on purpose. It is the one line a reader will scroll to deliberately, so it does not need to compete for early space — but it must be unmissable when they get there. Bold it.
Fitting one page without shrinking the type
When a draft runs long, the instinct is to drop to 9pt and squeeze the margins. Do not. Small type on A4 is unreadable on a 6-inch screen, which is where this page lives. Cut instead:
- Merge every school before your highest degree into one line — nobody asks about Class 10 marks.
- Reduce siblings to status, not biography: "one elder sister, married, in Bengaluru".
- Cut hobbies down to the two you actually do. A list of six reads as a list of none.
- Delete every field you left blank rather than leaving "Not applicable" scattered down the page.
Which file to send
| Format | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| The default. Sending to anyone who might print it; keeps fonts and layout exactly as designed | Some older phones open PDFs slowly; keep it under about 2 MB | |
| JPG / image | WhatsApp. Appears inline in the chat, so it is seen without a download | Cannot be edited or searched; make sure the text is still legible at phone width |
| Word (.docx) | When a matrimonial bureau or a relative will edit it for you | Layout shifts between versions of Word; never send it as the final copy |
In practice, send the image in the chat and attach the PDF underneath it. The image gets looked at; the PDF is what gets forwarded and printed.
Typography, briefly
- One typeface. Two at the absolute most — one for headings, one for everything else.
- Body text at 10–11pt on A4. Labels can go smaller; values should not.
- Left-align the values in a column. Ragged values scattered across the page force the eye to hunt.
- Avoid centre-aligning body text. Centred headings are fine; centred paragraphs are not.
- Use one accent colour, and use it for the section headings only.
Name the file properly
A file called `biodata_final_v3(1).pdf` arrives in a folder with forty others named the same thing. Use your own name.
Gets lost
biodata_final_v3(1).pdf
Gets found
Ananya-Krishnamurthy-Biodata.pdf
It is a small thing that costs nothing and it is the reason your page is still findable three weeks later. When you export from VivahAI the file is named for you automatically.
Once the layout is settled, the writing is what is left. How to write the About Me section covers the part most people rewrite six times.
Read next
- What Goes in a Marriage Biodata (and What Doesn't)
The six blocks every marriage biodata is built from, a field-by-field breakdown of what each one is for, and the details families quietly wish you had left off.
- Choosing the Photograph
The photo is looked at before a single word is read. How to pick one, what to avoid, and the technical details that decide whether it survives WhatsApp.
- Nine Mistakes That Get a Biodata Ignored
The errors that come up again and again — from three-page profiles and inconsistent ages to the illegal line some families still include without thinking.