Rajesh's Wedding Ranking

Couples and their guests vote on which wedding looked best, and Rajesh sees the standings in very large letters every morning.

Who this is for

Rajesh Deshmukh is seventy and has shot weddings in Nagpur for thirty-eight years. He works with two assistants and a nephew, Sameer, who edits at night. Rajesh wakes at half five, makes tea, and holds his phone at arm's length because his reading glasses are always in the other room. Before the tea goes cold he wants to know one thing: which of his weddings people liked most this month.

How the job is done today

He puts twenty photos from each wedding on Facebook and on his WhatsApp status. Then he scrolls to count likes, loses his place, and starts again from the top. Around eight he rings Sameer and asks which album is doing well. Sameer squints at three apps and gives a guess. Families ring Rajesh to say their wedding got the most love and he has no way to agree or disagree. There is a notebook where he writes couple names and a tick, but he stopped trusting it after the Bhandara wedding collected four ticks and no photos.

The screens, in order

1. The standings — Shows which weddings are ahead right now, the leader first, so anyone who opens the site sees the ranking before anything else.
2. One wedding — The page a guest reaches from a WhatsApp link, with the couple's names, their photos, and one vote button.
3. Vote taken — Tells the guest the vote landed and shows where that wedding now sits, so they pass the link to their cousins.
4. Rajesh's morning board — One page in letters big enough to read from across the table, showing the top five and what moved overnight.
5. Add a wedding — Where Sameer puts up a new couple and their photos so the wedding joins the standings without waking anyone.

What it keeps track of

• Wedding — couple names, the town, the date it was shot, the cover photo, the rest of the photos, whether it is showing publicly
• Vote — which wedding, which day and time, which phone it came from, whether it has already been counted
• Position — which wedding, votes in the last thirty days, place today, place yesterday

The one decision that matters

Rank by every vote ever, or only by votes from the last thirty days. All time is simpler and feels fair, but the December wedding will sit at number one until Rajesh dies, and then there is nothing to look at in the morning. A thirty day count lets a wedding from last week climb past an old favourite, and lets the old favourite slide when its guests stop caring. Go with the thirty days. Keep an all time list further down the page for families who want their name preserved somewhere. The morning is the whole point of this thing, and the morning needs something to have changed.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out comments and the box asking why you voted. Rajesh will read every word at half five with nobody awake to talk to, and one line about the lighting at the Wardha wedding will sit on him all day. Someone would also have to remove whatever strangers type, and there is nobody to do that job. A vote is a number, and a number cannot be unkind. Leave out sign in as well. A guest who has to make an account will simply close the page.

How you would know it worked

The mother of a bride rings Rajesh to say her cousins in Amravati have all voted and their wedding has come up to second. Rajesh tells her he knew at six that morning, without his glasses, from across the table.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I am a wedding photographer in Nagpur and I want a website where people vote on my weddings. Every wedding gets its own page with the couple's names, about twenty photos and one large vote button, and I will send that link to the family on WhatsApp. The front page should be a ranking with the most voted wedding at the top, counting only votes from the last thirty days so the order keeps shifting. One vote per phone per wedding. Make me a separate page showing only the top five in very large letters with an arrow for what went up or down since yesterday, because I am seventy and I hold the phone at arm's length. My nephew should be able to add a new couple and their photos himself. No comments anywhere on the site.