The big, fat Indian wedding gets bigger

A glitzy upper-crust wedding this week at a sprawling Delhi farmhouse–one of about 400,000 taking place in the capital this matrimonial season–is being attended by the who’s who in the city. The ceremonies, involving two business families, one in construction and the other in, let’s say, consumer goods, will include a cocktail party at Delhi’s Roseate Hotel before the wedding.

- Varuni Khosla

The grand party will have artist Bismil performing for about 400 guests. The food, organised by the five-star hotel, has had to have caterers come in specially from Delhi 6 restaurant. The function will cost upwards of ₹6,000 a plate, including taxes. All these apart, the wedding itself will have specialised catering from Mumbai’s famous Mahesh Lunch Home. The budget for the entire wedding: ₹6-7 crore.

That includes expenses towards the venue, gifts, catering including alcohol, and about ₹2 crore for entertaining the guests.

Mukta Kapoor, the planner for this mega-budget event, said the wedding business has never been better, with more than 3 million weddings taking place around the country between November and December alone. Traditionally, this is considered the peak wedding season in India. It slows around mid-December and resumes a month later, going all the way up to April.

Kapoor’s Delhi-based Yuna Weddings and Events has signed up to handle 85 weddings across November and December, taking charge of design and flowers for about four weddings a day as well as two or three big-ticket weddings for which her team oversees everything beginning with the concept. This is 15% more than the weddings the company handled last year, she said.

Most Indian families time weddings based on ‘saya’, or auspicious, dates. This year, the Hindu and Sikh calendars have 23 such dates in November and December, resulting in a boom in the wedding market.