Though these may not be the exact numbers, its believes that somewhere between one and ten million weddings in India take place every year.
With half of India’s population under thirty years of age, the marriage market will see unprecedented growth over the next five to ten years. With more spending power, bigger aspirations, and increasing awareness, Indians are more than willing to pay to make their wedding an important style statement.
Wedding Business Listings
Weddings Is Big Business In India
Couple of years back in November, on a particularly auspicious date on the Hindu calendar, a staggering 60,000 weddings took place in New Delhi alone — all in one evening — bringing traffic in the city to a standstill.
Out of all these weddings that happen in India, at least 2,000 high-end weddings (spending of Rs. 25 lakh to Rs. 5 crores and above) take place in India each year. These are multi-day extravaganzas with various functions & events (as you see in Sooraj Barjatya & Yash Raj films) that are complete with pyrotechnics, performances/guest appearances by Bollywood actors and international music stars, and thousands of invited guests.
If you’re a westerner and never been to a big fat Indian wedding, you’ll surely be blown by the experience.
Gets Bigger Every Year
For the rich Indian, wedding is also an apt occasion to show off your extravagance, your opulence, your wealth!
With prominent families trying to outdo each other, these weddings are only becoming bigger every year with even more elaborate events, more exotic destinations, more expensive clothes and fine jewelry.
For the ultra high net worth individuals, no gift is too lavish and no event is too opulent during the wedding season.
These are the businesses that benefit the most from Weddings:
- Gold and diamond jewellery market
- Wedding apparel market
- Durable goods market
- Marquee & venue decoration market
- Wedding invitation market
- Bridal mehendi market
- Hotel/related market
How Much Do They Spend?
Budgets for a high-end Indian wedding can easily reach around $2 million, including the cost of events, travel, food, clothing and especially jewellery.
There are many more weddings which cost $10 million or more. Several online resources reported that the Reddy wedding cost more than 100 crore rupees (more than $15 million).
According to one of the research reports, the average Indian spends almost one-fifth of the wealth accumulated in his lifetime on a son or daughter’s wedding, which is second only to the investment made in the family home. Combine this long-standing tradition with the desire for upwards social mobility and a rapidly developing economy, you have a wedding business estimated to be worth almost $40 billion a year, which is only going to grow.
Here’s what designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee (one of the biggest players in the Indian wedding market) has to say “It’s this constant class struggle, to enhance social standing in a public show of force. There is royalty. Then there is old money. Then there is new money trying to look like old money. Then there is new money. Then there is new, new money, and very, very new money. Then there is upper middle class, and middle class. And everybody wants to move upwards.”
Wedding Business Listings
Confused about how you’re going to handle all the arrangements of the big day and cast a grand affair (believe us, the affair will last longer than you can imagine)? Not sure how you’ll handle the madness, the hypersensitive family members and the exceeding expectations of guests?
Don’t worry! These guys will do it for you!
Fashion, wedding planners, choreographers, lifestyle specialists have all become an important part of any modern-day Indian wedding. Lots of event management companies now offer everything (that you need for your perfect wedding) from make up to jewellery to honeymoon destinations, all under one roof. These companies have expertise in conceptualizing, designing, creating and executing high-profile destination weddings (for Industrialists, Big Businesses, HNIs, NRIs, and more) in India and Overseas.
How will hiring these people help you?
You get an experienced team to cast a picturesque and majestic style that will leave your guests in awe and yearning for more. They plan the celebrations, design the experience & manage every aspect of the big day to cast a Grand Affair. These people will not only make it a memorable and larger than life event, they’ll also provide you with unique concepts to make your wedding a truly unique one.
Other key things they handle:
- Venues & Locations: Most top event management companies have a team of experts who accompany you for venue recce and assist you to choose the best venues suited for your functions. They keep in mind all the various aspects that are to be taken care of while choosing a venue for your event to be a success.
- They have tie-ups with specialists in Design & Decor, Catering, Invitations, Entertainment, Photo & Video
- Permissions & Licenses: Arrangements for all types of permissions and licenses required for your events are taken care of bu us.
- Budget Management: One of the most crucial and important aspects for a wedding is managing the budget and accomplishing things within its limits These people work on and plan the most minute to the most luxuriant expenditures to achieve your dream wedding. All this, keeping in mind the budgets, yet bringing to life, your dream wedding.
- Vendor Management: Your Mamas, Chachas and other relatives who are going crazy managing the Mandapwala, Caterer, Phoolwala, can breathe a sigh of relief because these experts will do it all for you.
- RSVP & Logistics: Wedding logistics can become a nerve wrecking task for any family, with guest list spread across continents. Their team of logistics experts help to smoothly run all your airport and railway transfers, internal transfers and venue transfers.
- Hospitality: Handles guest RSVPs, hotel checkins, and all the various hospitality related tasks, these professionals are involved in making sure that your family and your esteemed guests experience a comfortable stay.
- Event Timeline: We draft event timelines and the team of event managers coordinates the show flow and the smooth running of the event on the D-Day.
- …and more.
Checkout the various players in the Indian wedding segment, and what functions they specialize in. Write to us if you would like to list your business here (let us know if you need a separate category for your business).
Event Management
They’re usually your one-stop solution for everything, and have contacts with the key people in the wedding industry. You just hire them and leave the rest to them.
Wizcraft
Percept
Design & Decor
Their team of creative experts grasp your ideas, and interpret a theme that will leave you and your guests breathless. the good ones have a huge range of theme ideas and are open to creating personalized decor sets as well.
Wedding Design Company (WDC)
Entertainment
For the most awaited evenings, the bachelor parties and Sangeet nights, these experts design the best of entertainment keeping in mind the occasion and the family’s disposition. You can choose from among the top celebrities of the industry to perform for your guests on your special day, but how would you reach them? These guys make it possible for you, through their forte in celebrity management.
To get all the family members on their toes for the most fun-filled and memorable Sangeet nights and Mehendi celebrations we suggest and arrange personalised professional choreographers.
Photography & Videographer
Here you’ll find international, national and local photographers and videographers with varied experiences and exposure, from Filmmakers to Ad and TV Directors, to capture the glorious and memorable moments of your lives. So that whenever in life you want to relive these moments, they’ll look as real then, as it was on the wedding day.
Wedding Photographers Showcase
Wedding Films Channel
Trousseau & Personal Shopping
Personalized attention given to the close family members of the bride and the groom for shopping assistance and appointments with the top designers of the industry. Their team members personally accompany the family for shopping.
Honeymoon Packages & Bookings
These companies will assist the couples to choose from the most exclusive to the less explored honeymoon destinations and also with organizing and planning the entire honeymoon.
Catering & Menu Planning
Food is one of the most influential elements of a wedding. You may have the grandest of decor and the biggest celebrities to perform at your functions, but the menu if not set right, it can ruin your well planned wedding. These people understand the nature of your guest list and design the most suited menu that will leave your guests talking about your wedding for years to come.
Wedding Invitations
These creative people are equipped with original concepts and ideas to design and create your invitation cards (and other stationery items) required for your wedding. Right from designing luggage tags for your international guests to the event itineraries, and everything else that requires theme based personalization, these people will help you out.
Proposal Planning
If you want to make your proposal memorable for your partner, these people will help you dream up an entire unique style of proposing to your beloved.
Still confused about whom to choose?
We can help you choose the right people! We look forward to an opportunity, to transform the most important day of your life into the most remarkable and illustrious day for all who witness your ‘Big Day’. Feel free to write to us here.
Indian real estate tycoon bears wedding costs for fatherless Indian Brides
In India, a wedding is one of the most important occasion for most families. A substantial amount of money is spent on weddings; families (especially bride’s) save for years so that they can meet the expenses incurred at weddings.
Among the economically weaker sections, the bride’s family is not only expected to pay for the wedding, but also provide gifts to the groom.
So when a young woman’s father dies (the main bread earner in most poor families), the situation becomes really grim for the family.
That is why people like Mahesh Savani are considered to be messiah’s by such families in India.
Over the last decade or so, Indian real-estate tycoon Mahesh Savani (based in Surat) has organized weddings for hundreds of fatherless brides, not just paying for the event, but also giving each one of his new “daughters” a substantial dowry (gold, jewelry, furniture, home appliances, etc.). At each wedding, the businessman also performs their ‘kanyadaan’ (traditional ritual of handing over the bride).
I always thought that my dreams of getting married in a way I wanted, would remain only a dream, after my father passed away. But Mahesh Savani made sure my dreams came out true. And its not on ordinay wedding; its lavish by my standards,” a Muslim girl who got married.
It all started when a close relative of Mr. Savani died just a week before his daughter’s wedding, and Mahesh Savani stepped in to take his place, organizing the whole event and performing kanyadaan.
“That’s when I began to think of all the girls without fathers who needed someone to assume this responsibility and decided I would take this up,” says Savani.
All that he asks from the brides family is a death certificate (of the father), to make sure he is not being taken for a ride (after all, he is a businessman). He does not care about the religion and caste of the bride.
These events are also the perfect time for them to get rid of all their black money (undisclosed wealth). Most of this money is spent in cash and cheque writing happens very less. 100 me se 99 beimaan,phir bhi mera Bharat mahan.