Big fat Indian gala The Hindu
As the world emerges from the shadows of the economic slowdown, the big fat Indian wedding just got bigger and fatter.
Photo: AFP
Lavish indeed: From cards to decor to cakes to trousseau, weddings now come with the designer tag.
January 20, 2010. Vasant Panchami. The auspicious day in the Hindu calendar that heralds spring (and other good things) was a red letter day in the life of Akshay Narayan, a 26-year-old software engineer working in Bangalore. On that day, Narayan tied the knot with Anuja, a hotel management graduate from Mumbai, in a glitzy wedding in Jaipur.
It was a fairly typical affair: The big fat Indian middle-class wedding, colourful and chaotic by equal measures, with much fawning over the trousseau, much fussing made over the choice of caterers, a boisterous barat (in a chartered luxury bus travelling to Jaipur from Delhi), and an excited bunch of relatives turned out in all their finery trying out Bollywood moves on the sangeet stage to provide merriment. The budget: Just under Rs. 10 lakh.
One million rupees may be what an average middle-class Indian family lavishes on orchestrated galas that make up weddings in India, but look harder and you'll discover that the sum is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
International labels
As the world emerges from the shadows of the economic slowdown, and fond Indian parents shake off (both imaginary and real) constraints, the big fat Indian wedding has just got bigger and fatter. And we are not only talking about celebrity weddings like actor Shilpa Shetty's at the tail end of 2009 that saw the bride of the year wearing a Swarvoski-embellished, Tarun Tahiliani-designed, blood-red sari, reputed to have cost almost Rs 50 lakh!
