Destinations Line Up To Say 'I Do' To India

Outbound destination weddings have emerged as one of the fastest growing high-value segments of outbound tourism in India. Overseas destinations, new and old, are taking note and lining up to woo India.

- Ranvir Nayar & Varsha Singh

“I still vividly remember the scene. Mounted on an elephant back and dressed elegantly, he looked like a prince,” recounts Neha Agarwal, a homemaker in Kolkata, about how her husband, Mayank, looked the day she got married. That is not the only beautiful memory she has of the day or indeed the entire wedding ceremony that lasted three days and for which Neha, Mayank and 300 guests went to Bangkok.

She says that the idea of getting married overseas and that too in Bangkok was entirely her father’s. Ever since Vijay Kumar Dabriwal, a well-to-do businessman from Kolkata, attended a wedding at Hua Hin in Bangkok, he had decided that he would get his daughter married offat the same spot. His wish came true and in July 2016, he took a group of over 300 persons to Sheraton at Hua Hin for the wedding of his daughter.

The families had engaged a wedding planner and Agarwal says that the wedding was very well organised as the planner had taken meticulous care of every detail, providing an ideal mix of Indian culture and traditions with the local Thai flavour. “One of the highlights of the entire ceremony was of course that it came with a real Thai flavour with fire shows and other local entertainment programmes organised for the wedding party,” recounts Agarwal.

In the last six years, the outbound destination wedding market has seen revolutionary changes. First, it has grown multi-fold in size as many more couples are opting to tie the knot overseas and the demand is no longer restricted to the large metros like Mumbai, Delhi or Kolkata as many Indians living in Tier II or even Tier III cities are heading abroad for their big day.