Two-Way Chat

When a guest replies to any WhatsApp message from your wedding channel, their message appears in your Weddingkart inbox. You can respond from the app, and the guest receives your reply as a WhatsApp message — without leaving Weddingkart. Guests always stay on WhatsApp. Only you and your team operate from the Weddingkart app.

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How it works

1. You send a WhatsApp announcement to your guests (an invite, RSVP request, or event update).
2. A guest types a reply — for example, “What time should I arrive?” or “Can I bring a +1?”
3. Their message appears in your Inbox inside Weddingkart.
4. You type a reply in the app.
5. The guest receives your message on WhatsApp.

The conversation continues back and forth with no friction on either side.

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The inbox

Tap Chat in the bottom bar to open your Team Inbox — the list of every guest you have a conversation with for this wedding. Use the Search by name or phone number box at the top to find a guest. Before any guest has replied, the screen reads Your Team Inbox is empty. Everyone on the wedding team shares the same inbox, and new guest messages arrive live for everyone. Saving quick replies and sending attachments need Admin or Member access (see Team collaboration). Guests never see the inbox — they only ever use WhatsApp. In the web app on a wide screen, the inbox shows the chat list on the left and the open chat on the right. Until you pick a guest, the right side reads Select a chat to start replying. If the bar at the top says Reconnecting to chat, the app has lost its live connection and is getting it back; You are now connected. means it’s live again.

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Filter chips

Three chips sit above the list: All, Unread (n), and Needs attention (n). Tap Unread to see only conversations with messages you haven’t read yet. Needs attention shows chats the WhatsApp assistant has handed to you (see Automatic assistant replies). If a filter has nothing to show, you see You’re all caught up with No unread chats. Switch to “All” to see every conversation. (or No guests currently need bot escalation. on Needs attention).

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Pin a chat

Long-press any conversation and choose Pin chat. Pinned chats float to the top of the list with a 📌 next to the guest’s name and a soft amber tint behind the row. Use it for the chats you want to come back to all day — your decorator, the bride’s father, the venue contact. Unpin from the same long-press menu (Unpin chat).

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Mute a chat

Long-press a conversation and choose Mute chat (the menu notes Mute is local to this device for now). Muted chats show a 🔕 next to the guest’s name and stop showing new-message notifications while the Weddingkart app is open. When the app is closed or in the background, your phone may still show them. Muted chats still appear in the inbox and keep collecting messages. Useful for talkative friends threads while you focus on logistics.

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Dark mode

In the web app, the chat screens can be shown in dark colours. On the Team Inbox, tap ⋮ (More options) at the top right and choose Appearance, then pick one:

• Same as phone — the default. The chat screens go dark when your device or browser is set to dark mode, and stay light otherwise.
• Light — always light.
• Dark — always dark.

Dark mode covers the Team Inbox and the chat screen only. Every other screen in the app stays light for now. Your choice is saved on this device and browser.

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Notifications

Every team member on the wedding gets a push notification on each device they’re signed in on when a guest sends a message. The title shows the guest’s WhatsApp name and the couple’s names (for example Priya: Rahul & Anjali). The body shows the text, or a label such as 📷 [Image], 📄 [Document], 🎤 [Voice Message], 🎥 [Video], or 📍 [Location]. Tap the notification to open that guest’s chat directly. Notifications need to be allowed for Weddingkart in your phone’s settings. A title ending in (Previously Held) means the message was held until the guest picked your wedding (see Guests in more than one wedding).

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Inside a chat

Open any guest conversation and the chat screen gives you a few shortcuts on top of the message thread.

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Quick-jump chips

Three icon chips sit in the header of every chat — RSVP, Travel, and ID Cards. Tap one to jump straight to that guest’s submissions for that screen, without backing out and renavigating.

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Scroll-to-latest button

When you scroll up through history, a small round button appears in the bottom-right. Tap it to glide back down to the newest message. It only shows up once you’re more than a screenful away from the bottom, so it stays out of your way the rest of the time.

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Bulk select

Long-press any message, then tap Select. The header swaps into a selection bar that shows “N selected” and three bulk actions: Tap any other message to add or remove it from the selection. Tap the ✕ in the header (or the back button) to exit selection mode.

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Replying and the 24-hour window

WhatsApp lets you reply freely for 24 hours after the guest’s last message. Every new message from the guest restarts the 24 hours; your own replies don’t. While that window is open, the message box shows Replies here are free — no credits used. and gives you:

• 📎 Attach — send an Image, Video, Audio, or Document. Images and videos come from your gallery. Formats WhatsApp accepts: images JPG, PNG, WEBP; video MP4, 3GP, MOV; audio MP3, M4A, AAC, OGG, OPUS, AMR (the audio picker only offers these); documents PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLSX. Other file types may be rejected by WhatsApp.
• / Quick replies — pick a saved reply to drop into the message box, where you can edit it before sending. Tap Manage to add, edit, or delete saved replies (each has a Title and a Message). Quick replies are shared by the whole team on this wedding and don’t carry over to other weddings. They’re inserted exactly as written — there are no automatic placeholders such as the guest’s name.
• 🎤 Voice note — tap the mic to record, then send (or tap the bin to discard).
• Emoji picker.

A “Replying to” line above the box shows which of the guest’s numbers your reply will go to. If a guest has more than one number, their messages share one chat, and your reply goes to whichever number wrote last. Once the window has expired, a banner reads 24-hour window expired. Only text messages can be sent. Attachments, quick replies, and voice notes are hidden until the guest writes again; plain text still goes through, but WhatsApp requires it to go out in a standard reply format, so any line breaks are joined into one line. Plain-text replies typed in the chat don’t use credits; sending an announcement with the megaphone does. If sending media fails, you’ll see a short message explaining why:

• Couldn’t send that image. Please try again. (or video, audio, document) — the upload didn’t go through; check your connection and retry. Couldn’t read that file. or Couldn’t open that document. means the picked file couldn’t be loaded — pick it again or try another file.
• Microphone permission is needed to record a voice message. — allow microphone access for Weddingkart in your phone settings. That recording was too short. Hold on a moment before sending. — record for a little longer.

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Send an announcement from the chat

Tap the 📣 megaphone next to the message box to send one of your existing announcements to just this guest — without leaving the conversation.

1. Tap the megaphone. A sheet lists every announcement on this wedding, with a search box.
2. Tap the one you want. The confirm step shows a preview of the message as this guest will receive it (tap Full preview to read all of it), plus a reminder that it uses credits and can’t be undone.
3. Tap Send.

The message goes to this guest only. It shows up in the conversation immediately with a clock icon — queued, but not yet handed to WhatsApp — and reaches the guest about half a minute later, because it goes through the same scheduler that sends your other announcements rather than being sent on the spot. The clock gives way to the delivered message once it’s gone. It follows exactly the same rules as sending from the Announcements screen: credits, the 24-hour window, and delivery reporting all behave identically, and the send appears in that announcement’s report alongside everything else. Announcements that aren’t ready to send yet (missing a template or a required attachment, for example) appear greyed out with the reason, so you can see at a glance which ones are usable. If a chat isn’t linked to a guest on your list (someone messaged your number who isn’t a guest), the megaphone shows a notice instead — there’s no guest to send the announcement to.

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Message bubbles

Bubbles in two-way chat behave a lot like WhatsApp, with a few additions tuned for wedding ops.

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Images

Tap an image to open the full-screen viewer. The viewer’s built-in Share button lets you forward the image to anyone — Drive, the decorator’s WhatsApp, your photographer.

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Documents

• PDFs open inside the app in the bundled PDF viewer — no leaving Weddingkart to read a ticket or invitation proof. On the web app, PDFs open in a new browser tab instead.
• Other formats (xlsx, docx, and so on) hand off to your phone’s default app for that file type.
• If the sender didn’t name the file, the bubble falls back to the filename from the URL instead of showing a bare “Document”.
• Each document bubble shows the file size next to the filename, so you can spot the 30 MB PDF before tapping.

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Voice notes

Voice messages have an inline player — play and pause, scrub via the slider, and read the duration right inside the bubble. No external player needed.

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Videos

Video bubbles show a first-frame thumbnail instead of a grey placeholder, so you can recognise a clip at a glance.

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Link previews

When a message contains a URL, an Open-Graph card renders under the text with the page title, description, and thumbnail. Quietly skipped if the site doesn’t expose preview data.

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Markdown and smart links

Messages preserve WhatsApp-style formatting (*bold*, _italic_, ~strike~, monospace, highlight). On top of that:

• URLs become tappable links.
• Indian phone numbers (+91-style) become tappable too — tap to call or open in the dialer.

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Message tools

Long-press a message to open the action strip — a horizontal row of icons across the bottom of the screen:

• Copy — copies the message text to your clipboard.
• Forward — opens the forward flow for that single message.
• Share file — only on media messages. Downloads the bytes and hands them to your phone’s native share sheet, so the receiving app gets a real file (not just a URL).
• Select — enters bulk-select mode with that message pre-checked.

Tap the timestamp row on any message (the small “10:42 ✓✓” line under the bubble) to open the Message info sheet. It shows the full timestamp and a plain-English delivery status — “Read by the guest”, “Delivered to the guest’s phone”, “Sent — delivered to WhatsApp servers”, “Pending — not yet sent to WhatsApp” — so you don’t have to remember which tick means what.

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Messages from people not on your guest list

A chat only appears in your inbox when the sender’s number matches a guest on this wedding. A message from a number that isn’t on your guest list does not show up in the inbox:

• On Weddingkart’s shared number, the sender gets no automatic reply (so an invited guest is never told they aren’t invited), and the message is passed to the Weddingkart team to follow up.
• On your own WhatsApp number, the sender gets: “Thanks for your message — we’ve passed it along to the team, they’ll get back to you shortly.” The number’s owners and collaborators are alerted by push notification and on WhatsApp.

To chat with that person from the inbox, add them as a guest with the exact number they messaged from; their later messages then appear in the inbox. Guests of a wedding that hasn’t gone live yet are treated the same way, so make sure your wedding is live before guests start replying.

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Guests in more than one wedding

If the same phone number is a guest in more than one Weddingkart wedding, WhatsApp shows them a list and asks which wedding they’re messaging about. Their messages are held until they pick, then appear in the chosen wedding’s inbox. The guest can reply RESET at any time to pick a different wedding.

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Automatic assistant replies

On weddings where Weddingkart’s WhatsApp assistant is turned on, it can answer common guest questions automatically. When it can’t help, it flags the chat Needs attention (an amber label and left border in the inbox) and the team gets a push notification such as “Priya needs a reply” or “Priya asked for a person”, using the name you gave your assistant (Neeti by default). When the assistant hands a chat to your team, it steps back in that chat for 48 hours. Every reply from your team restarts the 48 hours, so the assistant only comes back after the team has been quiet in that chat for two days. You can switch it back on sooner yourself. In the web app, the assistant’s on/off control sits in the typing box, the way WhatsApp Business shows its AI agent:

• While the assistant is answering a chat, the typing box reads Neeti will reply to the next message… with an AI Agent pill. Tap the stop button to take over: the assistant pauses in that chat for 48 hours and you get the normal typing box.
• While it’s paused, a line above the typing box reads Neeti handed this chat to you (or Neeti is off in this chat) and when it comes back by itself, for example back tomorrow at 14:30. Tap the AI Agent pill to switch it back on straight away.
• The typing box is never locked when the guest’s 24-hour window has closed.

In the mobile apps, a Bot ON chip in the chat header controls the assistant for that one guest. Tap it and choose how long to pause it. While paused, the chip reads Bot OFF; choose Resume bot for this conversation to turn it back on. The chip is hidden on weddings where the assistant isn’t on.

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Web vs mobile

Two-way chat works in the web app and the mobile apps, with a few differences on web:

• PDFs open in a new browser tab rather than the in-app viewer.
• Voice notes need a browser that can record WhatsApp-compatible audio. If yours can’t, you’ll see “This browser can’t record a WhatsApp-compatible voice message. Try Chrome or Safari, or use the mobile app.” If the browser blocks the microphone: “Couldn’t access the microphone. Check the mic permission for this site in your browser and try again.”

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Key features

• Real-time messages — all team members on your wedding account see incoming guest messages as they arrive.
• Per-guest conversations — messages are organised by guest, so you can see the full thread with each person.
• Pin and mute — curate your inbox per device.
• Unread filter — one tap to focus on conversations that still need a reply.
• Bulk actions — copy, forward, or batch-share files across multiple messages.
• Quick jump — jump from a guest chat to their RSVP, Travel, or ID Card submission with one tap.
• Announcement quick-send — send an existing announcement to the guest you are chatting with, in three taps, without leaving the thread.
• Rich media — in-app image viewer, PDF reader, inline voice player, video thumbnails, link previews.
• Smart links — URLs and phone numbers in messages are tappable.
• Message history — conversations are retained for the duration of the wedding.

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Use cases

Two-way chat handles individual guest needs that bulk announcements can’t address:

• Answering questions about venue address, event timing, or parking
• Following up personally with guests who haven’t RSVPed
• Coordinating accommodation or transport with specific guests
• Responding to guests with special requests or dietary requirements

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Common questions

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Related pages