Just this morning, I opened my mail box to find an invite from The Turkish Tourism Board and Turkish Hoteliers Federation, who are planning an elaborate road show to five Indian metros later this month. The focus is on luxury wedding and honeymoon destinations in the little Eurasian country which, they hope, some Indians may find beguiling enough to host their extravagant weddings and contribute in no small measure to the country’s GDP. Sending in their representatives are over a dozen Turkish hotels.

Turkey, in fact, has been a slow starter. Several global luxury hotels, like the Peninsula Hotels, have already sent in their delegations in a bid to corner a piece of the lucrative luxury destination wedding market in India. Nothing prevents Indians from celebrating their weddings in the most lavish manner possible, not even a global economic slowdown, and most countries, dealing with economies that are struggling to stay afloat, are aware of the huge market we represent.

So, how big is the wedding market? A recent report by SME Business Service Limited, a joint venture between the Punjab government and a Punjab Infotech, a private limited company that surveys the market for the state government and offers them advice on the industries they need to push to ramp up the GDP, proves useful when it comes to analysing India’s luxury wedding market.

According to the report, India’s Rs 3,000 crore luxury wedding bazaar is the largest in the world. While global luxury brands are still figuring out how to tap into this market, increasingly, a Christian Dior dress or a Chanel clutch is finding its way into an affluent bride’s elaborate trousseau, along with a Tarun Tahiliani lehenga and a Manish Malhotra cocktail sari.

As expected, India’s capital city Delhi and the neighbouring state of Punjab are the biggest markets for luxury brands and haute couture Indian designers. However, cities like Chandigarh and Lucknow, and states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are rapidly catching up when it comes to indulging in luxury purchases right before the wedding.

Indian designers have forever known that the only way they can go from a small craft business to a full-fledged luxury fashion house is by catering to high-octane Indian weddings. Is it any wonder, then, that among India’s biggest fashion houses you can count several of India’s best and biggest wedding couturiers – Tarun Tahiliani, Rohit Bal, JJ Valaya and now Sabyasachi Mukherjee.

There is no business like the wedding business when it comes to sheer scale and numbers.