There is a habit worth breaking early: putting one date on the invitation and explaining the rest by phone.
It feels tidier. It is not. Every function you leave off is a conversation you have to have individually, with everyone, usually twice — once when they ask what time, and again when they ask where.
List everything, even the small ones
A dholki at somebody's house is an event. A rehearsal dinner is an event. The brunch the morning after, the tea ceremony, the mosque nikkah that only forty people are invited to — all events. If somebody needs to know a time and a place for it, it belongs on the invitation.
The reason people leave them off is usually that a printed card has no room. A digital one has as much room as you need, and — more importantly — not every guest has to see all of it.
Not everyone sees everything
This is the part that changes how you plan.
Each guest gets their own link. On it, they see the functions they are invited to and nothing else. So the forty people coming to the nikkah see the nikkah. The four hundred coming to the reception do not, and never know it was listed.
That means you can be completely thorough without anyone feeling excluded, and without a single "am I invited to this one?" message.
A practical order
Put them in the order they happen, not in order of importance. People read an invitation to plan a week, not to rank your events.
- The early, small ones — dholki, mayun, ubtan, roka
- The big evening functions — mehndi, sangeet, henna night
- The ceremony itself — nikkah, phere, chuppah, aghd, civil ceremony
- The reception — walima, banquet, dinner
- Anything after — brunch, after-party
Whatever you call yours, that is the shape. Name them the way your family names them; there is no list you have to pick from and no translation required.
One thing to get right
Put a contact on the card — a brother, a cousin, someone who will answer. People will still have questions, and a name with a tappable number saves you from being the switchboard for a month.