Writing a matrimony profile that gets replies

A matrimony profile is read by two audiences at once — the person and their parents — and they read it in different orders. The person reads the photo and the about section. The parents read the family section, the community, the education and the profession, and then the photo. A profile that works is written for both.

The order families read in

• Photo. One clear, recent, well-lit photograph of you looking at the camera, no sunglasses, no group. Families skip profiles with no photo and distrust profiles with only professional shoots.
• The facts. Age, height, community, mother tongue, religion, education, profession, city. Fill every field; a blank reads as evasion.
• Family. Parents and what they do, siblings and where they are, where the family is based, what the home is like. This is the section parents read twice.
• About you. What you are like to live with, what your days look like, what you want the next ten years to hold. Two hundred words is plenty.
• What you are looking for. Honest and specific: the community range, the city, the education, whether you would relocate.

The about section

The failure mode is the list of adjectives — "simple, caring, family-oriented, fun-loving" — that describes everyone and therefore no one. Write instead about what you actually do: the Sunday you cook for your parents, the running you have kept up since college, the job you took a pay cut for. Specific beats flattering. Families are trying to picture a life; give them a picture.

Avoid the negative list ("no smokers, no drinkers, no…"). Say what you are, and the filter takes care of the rest.

Birth details

If your family will want kundli matching, put the birth date, time and place in. Leaving them out reads as either not caring or having something to hide, and it forces every interested family to ask. If your family will not, the fields can stay empty and no one on TrueSaath is shown a horoscope score for you.

The step that changes everything

Get verified. Government ID and a liveness selfie take five minutes, and a verified badge is the difference between a family replying and a family wondering. Add work-email or credential verification if your profession is the kind families ask about, and a peer vouch if someone will give one. Nothing you write matters as much.

What to leave out

Your phone number and email — on TrueSaath they are exchanged inside a conversation, when both of you choose, so families are not fielding calls from strangers. Your salary to the rupee — a range is normal. Anything untrue — it comes out at the first family call.

Then

Send interests to profiles you have actually read, with a line that shows it. A family that receives "I noticed you also moved to Pune for work" replies; a family that receives an interest with nothing attached does not.