Partner Preferences for a Marriage Biodata - What to Write, With Examples

How to write partner preferences (apeksha) for a marriage biodata or matrimony profile: which filters matter, which shrink your pool, and sample lines.

20 October 20268 min read

Raj Patil · Founder, Vivah Swapn

Raj Patil is the founder of Vivah Swapn and writes about matchmaking, building strong matrimony profiles, and Maharashtrian marriage traditions.

हा लेख मराठीत वाचा

Good partner preferences for a marriage biodata are short: three to five things you will genuinely not bend on, written as ranges rather than exact numbers, followed by one or two lines about the kind of person you hope to marry. Everything else is better left open. A long list of conditions does not find you a better match. It finds you fewer matches, and it tells every family reading it that you will be hard to please.

This guide covers which preferences are worth stating, which ones quietly shrink your pool, how to phrase the ones you keep, ready-to-adapt examples, and how preferences work on a matrimony site, where they act as filters rather than words on a page.

Two places your preferences live

Most Marathi families now write expectations twice, and the two behave differently.

The apeksha line on a biodata is read by people. A family reads it in five seconds and forms an impression of your household. Extra conditions cost you goodwill.
Partner preferences on a matrimony profile are applied by software. Each one you set decides who is shown to you and who is counted as a match. An extra condition there costs you people you will never know you missed.

On paper, write less than you think. On a site, set fewer filters than you think. The reasoning is the same in both places.

Partner preferences that actually matter

Keep a preference when the answer would end the conversation anyway, no matter how good the rest of the profile is. For most families that list is short:

Marital status. If you are open to a divorcee or widowed partner, say so; if not, this is a fair line to draw.
Age range. A range of five or six years is normal. Write it as a range, not a single number.
Religion and mother tongue, if the family will truly insist. Many Marathi households care more about a shared language at home than anything else.
Where the couple will live. Pune only, Maharashtra, open to abroad, not willing to move abroad. This settles more matches than height or salary ever will.
Diet, if your home is strictly vegetarian and that will not change.
Kundli matching, if the family will not proceed without it. Say so up front rather than asking for a horoscope after the first meeting.

Things like wanting children, living with parents after marriage, or one partner moving cities for the other's job matter enormously but rarely fit in a filter. They belong in the conversation, and our list of questions to ask before an arranged marriage covers them.

Preferences that shrink the pool for no reason

Exact height

A minimum of 5 ft 10 in sounds harmless. Each inch you add removes a slice of otherwise suitable people, and a stated height says little about the person. If height matters to you, give a range two or three inches wider than your first instinct, or leave it out and decide when you see the profile.

Exact sub-caste

Many families who say "same caste" are happy with any sub-caste within it once they think about it. Narrowing to one sub-caste, one kul list or one region of the community can cut the pool to a handful of families you may already know. If caste matters at home, name the caste and let the sub-caste be a conversation.

Salary bands

Income in a biodata is a snapshot. A 27-year-old in their second job, a young doctor still in residency and someone running a family business all show a lower number now than they will in five years, and business income is often not stated at all. "Financially settled" or "in a stable career" says what most families actually mean. If you do set a minimum, keep it modest.

Complexion, looks and "well-settled family"

"Fair", "slim" and "good-looking" do not belong in a preference. They put off exactly the thoughtful families you want, and they say more about the writer than the reader. "Well-settled family" is vague enough to mean anything; if you mean "own house in Pune", that is a fact you can ask about later.

Stacking

The real damage comes from stacking. A height floor, a sub-caste, a salary floor, one city and an age band of three years together can leave almost nobody, even though each line looked reasonable on its own. Before you finalise, read the list as a whole and ask: how many people I would genuinely like does this rule out?

How to phrase your preferences

Use ranges: "27 to 32", "5'2" to 5'8"", not "28 only".
Separate "required" from "preferred": "Same caste preferred" reads very differently from "Same caste only".
Say what you want, not what you reject: "Looking for someone who values family and their own career" instead of "No non-working girls" or "No boys from villages".
Drop the absolutes: "strictly", "only", "no ... please", "time-passers stay away".
Add one human line: a sentence about temperament or values. Our guide to writing the About Me section has examples of what that sounds like.

Partner preference examples

Adapt these rather than copying them; the point is the shape.

For a groom (written by parents):

Expectations: A girl aged 25 to 30, graduate or above, from a Marathi-speaking family. Working or not, as she wishes. Settled in or willing to live in Pune. We hope for someone cheerful and family-minded who will be comfortable in a home where the grandparents live with us.

For a bride (written by herself):

Partner preferences: 28 to 34, postgraduate preferred, vegetarian, based in Pune or Mumbai. I am looking for someone who respects my career as much as his own and enjoys travel, books and long conversations.

For a second marriage:

Looking for a partner aged 35 to 42, never married, divorced or widowed. I have a daughter who lives with me, so I hope for someone who will welcome her as family. Kundli matching not required.

Our guide to writing a second-marriage biodata has more on this case.

For someone abroad:

Expectations: 26 to 31, from a Maharashtrian family, open to moving to Toronto after marriage. Education and profession open. Most important to me is someone independent and adaptable.

For a family that is flexible:

No fixed expectations beyond a good nature and a shared Marathi upbringing. Caste no bar.

Notice what none of them contain: an exact height, a salary, a complexion, or a single "only".

Setting partner preferences on a matrimony site

On Vivah Swapn, preferences are one step of the profile, called "What you are looking for". Leaving any field blank means "no preference", and that is a sensible default for most of them. The step has:

Core preferences: minimum and maximum age, minimum and maximum height (in centimetres), marital statuses and diets.
Education and income: a minimum education level or specific education levels, and a minimum and maximum annual income band.
Other preferences: religions, castes, mother tongues, occupations, a Manglik preference and a physical status preference (both default to "Does not matter"), plus a free-text box, "About your preferred partner". You can type it in Marathi or English and the other language is filled in for you to check.
Current residence preferences and native place: countries, states, districts and talukas, for where your partner lives now and where their family comes from.

There is no complexion preference and no separate sub-caste preference. If you pick a caste, members in its sub-castes count as a match.

Two things about how these are used are worth knowing before you fill them in:

A preference counts against anyone who left that field blank. If you set a height range, a member who never entered a height does not meet it. Every filter you add hides incomplete profiles along with the ones that genuinely do not fit.
Matching works both ways. The "For you" view in search shows members whose profiles fit your preferences and whose preferences you fit. Each profile page also shows how many of the other person's preferences you meet, for example "7 of 9 match". If "For you" comes up empty, the "All" view still shows everyone, and the fix is usually to loosen one filter, not five.

The free-text box is where the human part goes. The filters are for deal-breakers only.

Review your preferences after a month

Preferences written before you have seen a single profile are guesses. After three or four weeks, look at who you have actually liked. If most of them fall outside a filter you set, the filter is wrong, not the people. Loosen one condition at a time and watch what changes.

Frequently asked questions

How many partner preferences should a biodata have? Three to five conditions plus one or two lines about the person. If the expectations section is longer than your own education section, it is too long.

Should parents or the bride and groom write the expectations? Ideally the person getting married, with the family agreeing on the deal-breakers first. A list written only by parents often carries conditions the son or daughter does not actually hold. Our marriage biodata guide covers how the whole page fits together.

Is it all right to write "no expectations"? It reads as either very relaxed or careless. One line such as "a good nature and a shared Marathi upbringing" is better than "no expectations" and almost as open.

Should I mention caste in partner preferences? Only if it is a real condition at home. If it is, name the caste rather than a sub-caste, and write "preferred" if there is any flexibility. "Caste no bar" is a perfectly common line too.

Should I write the salary I expect? Usually not. "Financially settled" or "in a stable career" covers what most families mean without excluding people early in their careers or running a business.