MY TAKE
BANDWAGON, BAJA, BARAAT
An “average” Indian wedding could cost between $30,000 and $155,000. A person in India is estimated to spend one-fifth of the total wealth accumulated in his lifetime on his wedding. Image credit: PRASHANT on Unsplash.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
The wedding season is in full swing – in India, that is, where most weddings are scheduled in the cooler months – and thus, wedding invitations are coming in, by email and snail mail.
Each promising lavish events with all the bells and whistles you could imagine.
Choreographed sangeet parties, live entertainment, even wedding planners, are almost passé now. With each one trying to outdo the other, guest are in for over-the-top experiences.
Showers of orchid petals – marigolds are so lower middle class – and celebrity performances.
Which, of course, cost the families a fortune. And we’re not even counting the cost of designer outfits for the bride and groom – several costume changes are required for all of the functions held over multiple days.
I recall the well-to-do father of a bride grumbling good-naturedly (before being shushed by his nervous wife – what would people think?) about the price of just one lehenga their daughter had picked. He had offered jewellery, instead, but was tuned down.
“That lehenga will only be worn once – gold would have been an investment in her future,” he said.
I had visions of Miss Havisham’s moth-eaten gown. But at least he’d tried.
I recall another father (of the groom this time) who was spending like he’d taken lessons from Ambani. I made the mistake of saying that much money could have been put to better use to buy a home for the newlyweds and received a curt response.
“That would not go well with our sabhyata and parampara (culture and tradition).”
What was left unsaid but heard loud and clear was, “You clueless NRIs wouldn’t understand”.
And so, as per culture and tradition, they hosted the wedding at a haveli in Rajasthan, not a palace, as they added with a self-deprecating laugh – “We’re not all Priyanka Chopra, you know? Ha ha!” – with an impossible array of food stations offering every possible kind of cuisine.
I get the whole give-and-take that goes on in weddings, but what to give the couple is also a class in one-upmanship. As a lady once said to me, she’d given gifts to kids of family and friends over the years, now it was time for her kids to reap the benefits!
But it’s not just desi weddings in India, we see similar pressures at play in the community here in Canada, too.
In The Wedding, Gurjinder Basran describes one that’s costing the groom’s side alone a whopping $250,000.
For contrast, I think of the small destination wedding we had the pleasure of being a part of a couple of years ago. The guests were limited to immediate families, members of the extended families the couple were close to, and dear friends. People who mean something to them, not their parents’ business associates. They made all the arrangements themselves and paid for everything.
Everyone was told not to bring gifts. But of course the desi contingent ignored such instructions.
“Who listens to the bachcha party?” said one. They all showed up with gold and money. In cash! With the amounts ending in the auspicious one, much to the bemusement of the non-desi guests.
One of the guests who has spent many years in the US couldn’t resist describing other weddings she had attended. “The kids all want the big fat Indian wedding, and their parents to pay for everything. But they don’t want any parental inputs. I even know of a girl who said she didn’t want her grandparents there because they didn’t fit in the glamorous event she had in mind.”
A friend to whom I described the wedding had a similar take. “The parents were lucky they got to relax and enjoy the wedding, but you can only do that at these small, intimate weddings. I’ve been to ones that were so huge, everyone was harried for months in advance.”
To what purpose? To collect a bunch of people who would go back and rate the event against others they had attended?
A search for the average cost of weddings in India throws up scary figures.
The Indian wedding industry currently accounts for over $150 million and is growing at a rapid rate of 25-30% each year. An “average” Indian wedding could cost between $30,000 and $155,000. A person in India is estimated to spend one-fifth of the total wealth accumulated in his lifetime on his wedding.
It was noted that 73% of individuals with an annual income of approximately $7-14K are spending $11-17 K on their weddings. And that an average middle-class Indian spends approximately $25K to $38K on their weddings.
According to research by Pragati Gramodyog Evam Samaj Kalyan Sansthan (PGS), a pan-India non-profit, more than 60 per cent of Indian families turn to money lenders to borrow funds for wedding ceremonies.
There’s a lovely episode in the TVF production Aam Aadmi Family in which a wedding is being planned.
The number of guests burgeons from 300 to 900 but the father, a mid-level employee, remains unruffled while adding up the cost for the dinner at $30 per person.
It happens to be an ad for mutual funds and the wisdom of investing for future expenses like a child’s higher education or a wedding, but let’s set that aside for the moment.
When the daughter tells her fiancé that this is unfair and a burden on her father, and he offers to share the cost of the wedding – each side will pay for their guests – her father blows a fuse.
He will not have it, he announces. What will people say?
His mother, a delightful dadi if ever there was one, chimes in, and tell him to gift the money he will save to the couple. “How lucky we are that she is marrying into such an enlightened family,” she says.
If only more daughters and dadis were like these two.