High-profile wedding planners with big teams orchestrate huge destination weddings, putting together elaborate wardrobes, entertainment packages for the events leading up to the wedding and intricate décor. They also control the biggest pie of India’s multi-crore wedding business.

Indian Wedding

Weddings aren’t what they used to be anymore.

I remember with some amount of nostalgia all the extravagant, disorganised, over-the-top Delhi weddings I have attended over the years. They have been loud, of course; how can they not be if you put over 400 gregarious Punjabis under one roof. Colourful, yes, that’s a given fact for any Indian wedding, what with the gaudily dressed women and silk fabric covered shamiana. They have been exotic. Remember, this is one of the few times we like to be truly Indian and follow every ritual and tradition in the book. And gourmet experiences, but of course. Isn’t gorging on the lovely food laid out the sole reason why many of us attend weddings?

The last wedding I attended had a Mediterranean theme. The planner employed by the host recreated a Spanish hacienda, complete with blue and rose-coloured walls.

The Big Fat Indian Wedding has just got flashier and bigger, spawning an entire industry ruled by the resourceful, well-travelled, stylish wedding planners, a concept borrowed firmly from the West. “Everyone wants their marriage to be bigger, better and more sophisticated than the one they have attended or heard about before,” admits Mehr Sarid, who founded Sound of Music and The Wedding Art, an event management and wedding planning firm a couple of years ago.

Indian Wedding

Simon Caso, General Manager of Wizcraft, the entertainment biggie that spun off a wedding planning division five years ago, terms each wedding a turnkey project, “one that has to be planned in minute detail, right from the theme to the hotel bookings for the relatives who fly down, the cuisine to be served, even the chocolates and liqueurs as add-ons.”
Most upper crust weddings are actually events, planned in such a way that they would be talked about for years to come and hopefully, covered by celebrity-crazy, glamour-afflicted media. Martin D’costa, founder of Seventy, an event management services company, compares the process of working on a wedding to “that of an event. The skill sets we require from people who join our wedding planning division, Seven Steps, include event management.”
Weddings, then, is all about creating drama and leaving an impression. And if crafting a public image, demonstrating social and financial clout, and having fun without taking on the hassles of planning such a grand party is on the top of the agenda, it makes complete sense to employ professional wedding planners. As Delhi-based wedding planner Geeta Samuel says, “We are qualified, know the business inside out, speak the sophisticated lingo, are jet setters and well versed with global style, fashion and lifestyle trends.”

Wedding Ceremony

The professional Indian wedding planners come from a hotel background, or have studied wedding planning abroad, or have simply stumbled upon the career by chance. All of them invariably are event and party managers, and weddings are another addition to their business plan.

Sarid, for instance, assisted her theatre professional mother create sets for her stage shows. A hotel management degree and a stint at Hyatt hotel and the Maurya Sheraton led her to believe that weddings and events is where the money and the excitement lay. She took off to Salisbury, Austria to specialise in wedding management, after which she travelled through much of the world, picking up the art. “I was based in Hong Kong and worked with the Cathay Pacific, which gave me the chance to travel. I was also freelancing as a wedding planner. In 1998, I decided to quit my job, come to India and set up an entertainment company. Planning weddings seemed a natural choice. In India, marriages are all about entertainment.”

She does about 70 weddings in a season, “which take close to three months to plan. I am booked almost a year in advance.” The planning process includes not just working on the theme, but also the cuisine, the luxurious add-ons (want a chocolate station, complete with chocolate liqueurs or a Teppanyaki counter? Or desire to convert a 10-acre ground into a Rajasthani palace? You just have to ask), coordinating with the guests and arranging for their travel and stay in hotels, organising the entertainment, which could go from flying down Bollywood singers like Shaan, hot item girls, pop musicians like Ila Arun or Spanish flamenco dancers, as well as coordinating or even suggesting designers to the bride and the groom.

Indian Bride

“If it’s a gown they want to wear, we send them to Tarun Tahiliani, and if it’s a funky Indian outfit, then it has to be Sabyasachi Mukherjee!” Breaking in wasn’t a cakewalk, Sarid insists, “as everyone was too used to the cheap tentwallahs and found professional wedding planners really expensive. Many didn’t understand the concept of a wedding planner.”

Some like Mumbai biggie Gurlein Manchanda, who has designed the weddings of Sahara founder, Subrata Roy’s two sons, Sushanto and Sumanto (which incidentally was so huge that both, Manchanda and Sarid worked on different aspects, separately of course!), T-series head honcho, Bhushan Kumar, Piramal’s daughter, Aparna, as well as the recent nuptials of builder Vicky Oberoi to actor Gayatri Joshi, work mainly on the theme, décor and the food.

Manchanda stumbled upon the business much by chance, when the parties she threw, drew whole load of attention. “The first event I ever coordinated professionally was the wedding anniversary of Raja Dhody’s parents. Since then, there has been no looking back.”

Word-of-mouth publicity helped. Now she works with a team of over 200, many of them qualified event managers, designers and florists. “We actually handcraft most of the light fittings and candle stands we use at the venue,” she says. “We pay attention to the flowers we flew in from all over the world and the lighting arrangement. The ultimate idea is to create a dream space that soothes your senses and makes you feel good about being there.” Modern design elements, revolving around the use of fresh flowers, ambient lighting and unusual accessories, great food presentation and the desire to make an impact marks her work. “Every little detail, from the kind of flowers to be used at the venue, to the way the food should look and not just taste, the lighting that can be used as highlights across the venue, is paid attention to.”

Sounds more like creating a film set than a simple wedding venue. But then who ever said wedding was about simplicity anymore.

Much like Manchanda, Geeta Samuel and her husband, Arun, entered the wedding business as an afterthought. Hotelier by profession, Geeta got into it first, in 1990, only to be joined by her husband, Arun, who works with merchant navy, a bit later. “The initial idea was to design events and celebrations, but there can’t be a bigger celebration than a wedding.” She works only on the decor and the theme. “That’s our core competence, but we end up chipping in with the food menu and designing the cards.”

Wedding Setting

Like most other wedding planners they design every occasion, from pre-wedding rituals like sangeet and bachelor or spinster parties, to the D-day event and the reception. “It’s been a gradual process, from the tentwallahs to professional planners. Once, families got together and organised weddings. Then, the tentwallahs came in. Now, it’s the age of the wedding planner. People travel widely and are exposed to lifestyle trends abroad. They understand it’s easier to leave everything to a professional. This way, you are left free to enjoy the rituals happening at home.”

For some, like Seventy Event Management Services and Wizcraft, spinning off wedding planning divisions as part of their entertainment management company has been a hardcore business decision. Wizcraft does only about eight weddings a season. Weddings make up about a quarter of Seventy’s business. “We had already designed some big events when we were approached to do a wedding,” discloses D’costa. “Ultimately, it’s all about planning and client servicing.” Like most planners, Seventy does everything, from flying in relatives and friends, to flying them to exotic destinations where different ceremonies may be taking place, to coordinating the colour of the bride’s dress.

They have often flown down more than 800 guests to Jaipur, Udaipur, Maldives or wherever a ceremony is being held. “I remember flying down guests for a wedding to Mumbai, then getting them to Mauritius for a pre-wedding party, and then back to the city for the rest of the rituals and the main ceremony. We had to hire chartered flights.”
Today, high-profile wedding planners with big teams orchestrate huge destination weddings, putting together everything – from elaborate wardrobes to entertainment packages for the events leading up to the wedding to intricate décor. They control the biggest pie of India’s multi-crore wedding business.