Marriage Biodata Format for a Boy: What to Include and How Much to Share

The format is the same seven sections everyone uses. There's no separate structure for men.

What's different is which fields you'll get pressed on: income, property, how stable your job is, and where you plan to live after marriage. Those four come up in nearly every conversation, and it's easier to decide on them once, in writing, than to field them one family at a time. There's a complete format below you can copy.

If you want the general structure and the reasoning behind each section, the marriage biodata format guide covers it properly. This one assumes you've read that and deals with the decisions that come after it.

The seven sections, in order

1. Personal details — name, date of birth, age, height, marital status, mother tongue, current city
2. Education and career — qualification, institution, role, organisation, income if you choose to include it
3. Family details — parents' names and occupations, siblings, family background
4. Cultural and horoscope details — religion, community, birth time and place, rashi, nakshatra, manglik status, whichever of these your family uses
5. About you — three or four sentences in your own voice
6. What you're looking for — a short, honest list
7. Contact — who to reach, and how

Sections two and five are where most of the work is on a boy's biodata, for reasons that have nothing to do with writing.

The fields you'll get asked about

Income

You'll be asked. That part isn't really in your control, so the useful question is whether you'd rather answer once on the document or repeatedly on the phone.

Three approaches, all normal:

• State a range. "₹18 to 22 lakh per annum" answers it without publishing a payslip.
• Write the role and organisation type instead. "Design engineer at an automotive components company" tells a reader more than a number does, and it dates less quickly.
• Give the figure, if that's what your family expects and you're comfortable with it.

If you do write a number, say which number it is. CTC and what actually reaches your account every month are different figures, sometimes by a lot. Quoting the first while the family reading it assumes the second is a correction you'll have to make in person, and it lands badly for a reason that was never really about money.

Property and assets

Some biodata list a flat, a plot of land, or whether the family home is owned. This appears far more often on a boy's biodata than on a girl's.

Families ask because they're trying to work out something practical: whether the couple will have a place of their own, or be sharing one, and where. That's a fair thing to want to know.

Two cautions if you include it. List only what's genuinely yours. If the house is in your father's name and two brothers will have a claim on it eventually, "own house" is a sentence you'll be walking back later. And remember the document travels. A biodata forwarded through three family groups is a list of your assets in the hands of people you never chose to send it to.

Leaving the section out entirely is also a normal choice. It doesn't read as concealment.

Job stability

Often the question underneath the salary question, and sometimes asked more insistently.

Government or private, permanent or contract, and whether the posting is transferable. A family asking about a transferable job usually isn't judging it. They're working out whether their daughter will be moving city every three years, which is a reasonable thing to want to know in advance.

One line handles it. "Permanent, Group B, transferable posting" or "Private sector, five years with the same company" is enough. If you're between jobs or on a contract that ends soon, say so plainly and say what's next. A gap stated calmly reads as ordinary.

Onsite postings, deputation and living abroad

If you're on a work visa, on deputation, or expecting a posting in the next year or two, put it on the biodata.

This isn't a small thing. It changes what the other family is deciding about, and for some of them it decides whether a conversation is worth starting at all. Say what the plan is and roughly when. If you intend to come back, say when. If you genuinely don't know yet, write that, because "undecided" is an honest answer and a lot of people are in the same position.

Finding this out in the third conversation is much worse than reading it in the first minute.

Where you'll live after marriage

The question that gets asked least directly and matters most.

If your parents will be living with you, say so. If you're the only son, or your parents are dependent on you, or there's a settled expectation in your family about who stays where, one sentence covers all of it. Put it in the About Me section rather than making a field out of it.

"My parents live in Thrissur and plan to stay there" and "I live with my parents and that won't change after marriage" are both perfectly ordinary sentences. Written plainly, neither reads as a condition. And the families it wouldn't suit will step back early, which is the whole point of putting it in writing.

Height, complexion and horoscope

Height is factual. Write it as it is, in feet and inches or centimetres, whichever your family uses.

Complexion is printed on plenty of templates for men too, and it's as uninformative there as anywhere else. A field existing isn't a reason to fill it in.

Horoscope details are asked of everyone, so there's nothing boy-specific to say. Include birth date, time and place if the families you're sharing with compare horoscopes, and leave the section out if they don't.

If you're helping with a sister's or daughter's biodata at the same time, the format for a girl goes through the fields that come up on that side.

A complete format you can copy

Filled in and realistic, and safe to edit. Arjun is invented.

PERSONAL DETAILS
Name: Arjun Menon
Date of Birth: 2 November 1994
Age: 31
Height: 5 ft 9 in
Marital Status: Never married
Mother Tongue: Malayalam
Current Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka

EDUCATION & CAREER
Education: B.Tech Mechanical Engineering, NIT Calicut (2016)
Occupation: Senior Design Engineer
Organisation: An automotive components company in Bengaluru
Employment: Permanent, five years with the same company
Annual Income: ₹18 to 22 lakh (a range, or leave this out)
Property: (include only what is actually yours, or leave it out)

FAMILY DETAILS
Father: Suresh Menon, retired electrical engineer
Mother: Latha Menon, retired school teacher
Siblings: One elder sister, married, works as a pharmacist in Thrissur
Family Background: The family is from Thrissur, where my parents still
live.

CULTURAL & HOROSCOPE DETAILS
Religion: Hindu
Community: (include if your family uses it)
Time of Birth: 11:20 PM
Place of Birth: Thrissur, Kerala
Rashi / Nakshatra: (include if your family compares horoscopes)
Manglik: (include if your family asks)

ABOUT ME
I design components for electric vehicles and I have been with the same
team for five years. I run most mornings, I follow cricket more closely
than is reasonable, and I cook when work is not sending me somewhere.
My parents live in Thrissur and plan to stay there, so I would be
setting up home in Bengaluru.

WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR
Age: 26 to 32
Education: Graduate or above
Profession: Open, and I would like her to keep working if she wants to
Location: Bengaluru, or open to moving for the right reason

CONTACT
Arjun Menon: +91 98450 00000
Best reached: after 7 PM on weekdays

Delete any line that doesn't apply to you. A shorter biodata with nothing missing reads better than a long one with brackets left in it.

Common mistakes

• Quoting CTC and letting it read as take-home. Say which figure it is, or give a range and avoid the problem.
• Listing property instead of a personality. Two lines of assets and one vague sentence about yourself tells a reader what you own. It doesn't tell them anything about living with you.
• Claiming property that isn't yours to claim. The family home in your father's name isn't your house yet, and saying otherwise gets corrected face to face.
• Being vague about a move. A posting abroad, a transfer, a plan to return: all of it is easier read than explained later.
• Writing About Me in the third person. "He is working as a design engineer" reads like a form somebody filled in about you.
• Handing the whole thing to a parent. The family and horoscope sections, fine, they know those better than you do. The paragraph about you should sound like you, and the about me guide has examples if that's the part you're stuck on.

Keeping it current

The details on a boy's biodata are usually the first to go out of date. A promotion, a transfer, a move to a new city, a posting that came through. Meanwhile the PDF sitting in fifteen chat threads still says what was true last March.

If you'd rather not remake the file every time, you can build a biodata on MarriageProfile and share it as a link. Editing the details updates what everyone sees, and the link itself stays the same. On the paid plans you can set a view password, so only the families you gave it to can open it. You can also turn off PDF downloads, and keep the biodata out of search results, which is off by default on every new one.

One thing worth being clear about, because the income question makes people hope otherwise: there's no way to show the biodata and hide a single line of it. What you control is who gets the link and what that link is allowed to do, not which fields a particular reader sees. So make the call on income and property once, while you're writing it, and then send it without second-guessing.

It's also worth seeing the eight designs with the same details in each before you settle on one. The format matters more than the design, but a layout that suits your content is easier to read.

Get the seven sections right, decide the four hard fields deliberately, and send it knowing it'll be forwarded.