Indian weddings today are all about making personal statements and breaking free from traditions
Months before 28-year-old Rutuja Pol and 27-year-old Ajinkya Andhare got married, they spent intensive sessions with their priest, understanding what each ritual, each incantation to be pronounced during the wedding meant. “We did that so we could understand what was relevant to us,” says Rutuja, adding that they dropped traditions such as kanyadan (giving away of the bride), taking note of its roots in child marriage.
Their outfits were carefully picked to suit their philosophies of sustainability and social responsibilities. “I bought my saris: Chanderi and Kashmiri, directly from the weavers.” The venue, an old fortress near Pune, was selected to represent their Maharashtrian culture.
Like Rutuja and Ajinkya, an increasing number of young couples are choosing to break free from the cookie cutter mould of weddings, and make the event a personal statement. We get some of India’s key wedding planners to deconstruct how the wedding scene here is changing.
Enter, social media
Vidya Singh and Rekha Rangaraj of Chennai-based Sumyog wedding planners have worked as partners for two decades, for clients such as actor Dulquer Salman and Anirudha Srikkanth. After years of working together, they tend to pick up on each others’ line of thought and complete them.
So when Rekha mentions the impact of social media on weddings, Vidya nods in agreement, and chips in, “Pinterest revolutionised life for us. When brides come to us, they already have an idea of what they want, after spending hours on these sites, watching other people’s weddings, taking hints from there, and exchanging notes on WhatsApp with their friends.”
Many, often look at a celebrity weddings, and want to implement that aesthetic, but maybe at a smaller scale. “Back when Aishwarya Rai got married, a long time after that, brides would insist on flower jewellery like hers,” says Vidya. Today, the trend may be bright floral patterns, like actor Priyanka Chopra at her engagement, or pastels like cricketer Virat Kohli and actor Anushka Sharma.
Hashtags keep track of the journey of a wedding, from the engagement to the reception. Enthusiastic friends and families post pictures of the bride and groom with unique hashtags. It makes the wedding stand out, and gives it individuality, explains Rekha. “One of our clients streamed their wedding live online for all their friends and families who live in a different country, and couldn’t come down for the wedding,” says Vidya. She points out how even in South Indian weddings, clients ask for mehendi functions, pinning it down to social media influence. Later, over phone, Mumbai-based Farid Khan, founder of Wedniksha, confirms this. “Every wedding wants a baaraat these days, though it was something very Punjabi. The concept of sangeet, which was originally a Muslim tradition where the bride is applied henna while dholkis are played, has also seeped into every community.”
It’s personal
The Great Indian Wedding has been a question of prestige among social circles. Weddings and vanity almost always go hand-in-hand, however, the idea of weddings having a ‘recall value’ have just been updated to suit the digital age.
Farid, who worked with actress Sonam Kapoor, and her husband, Anand Ahuja, says, “At Sonam’s wedding, there were Jo Malone candles for every event, so you would associate the wedding with that fragrance.” Couples choose to have their initials, or their conjoined nicknames printed on giveaways, invites, door key cards of hotel rooms where guests have been put up in, and so on: Anything that would make the wedding personal.
“We see youngsters refusing to have a wedding with people they barely know,” says Tina Tharwani, co-founder of Shaadi Squad (Mumbai), the team behind the Anushka-Virat wedding, and Priyanka-Nick engagement. Her clients, she says, get quirky when it comes to giveaways and welcome gifts. One of them had safety pins in their gifts, a nod to the multiple number of pins it takes to keep a sari in place. Yet another, gave hangover kits to their guests after the sangeet.
The personalisation also reflects in the food the couples serve. Farid recalls a wedding he did in which a particular brand of whisky, Maggi, and sandwiches from street shops near Mithibai college in Mumbai, and chocolate cigarettes were served, as an ode to what the couple bonded over.
Says Farid, “People prefer candid photography at their weddings, so that they aren’t stressed. The official posed ones are taken during pre-wedding shoots.”
The good Samaritans
“Going eco-friendly is the next big thing in weddings,” says Tina. As couples from Chennai and Bengaluru have shown in the past few years, zero-waste weddings are very much possible.
“This trend also reflects in the wedding giveaways of sustainable fabric gifts, eco-friendly baskets, vegan kits. Health conscious couples experiment with sugar-free sweets too,” she says.
But the biggest impact of environment-friendly weddings can be seen in the growth of ancillary sustainable crafts, providing space to socially responsible artisans. Wooden cutlery, decor made from scraps, handmade goodies sourced from local NGOs, flowers from organic markets, and donating leftover food... It is in these little changes that Indian millennials are rejecting big fat weddings to champion the greater, greener cause.
Months before 28-year-old Rutuja Pol and 27-year-old Ajinkya Andhare got married, they spent intensive sessions with their priest, understanding what each ritual, each incantation to be pronounced during the wedding meant. “We did that so we could understand what was relevant to us,” says Rutuja, adding that they dropped traditions such as kanyadan (giving away of the bride), taking note of its roots in child marriage.
Their outfits were carefully picked to suit their philosophies of sustainability and social responsibilities. “I bought my saris: Chanderi and Kashmiri, directly from the weavers.” The venue, an old fortress near Pune, was selected to represent their Maharashtrian culture.
Like Rutuja and Ajinkya, an increasing number of young couples are choosing to break free from the cookie cutter mould of weddings, and make the event a personal statement. We get some of India’s key wedding planners to deconstruct how the wedding scene here is changing.
Enter, social media
Vidya Singh and Rekha Rangaraj of Chennai-based Sumyog wedding planners have worked as partners for two decades, for clients such as actor Dulquer Salman and Anirudha Srikkanth. After years of working together, they tend to pick up on each others’ line of thought and complete them.
So when Rekha mentions the impact of social media on weddings, Vidya nods in agreement, and chips in, “Pinterest revolutionised life for us. When brides come to us, they already have an idea of what they want, after spending hours on these sites, watching other people’s weddings, taking hints from there, and exchanging notes on WhatsApp with their friends.”
Many, often look at a celebrity weddings, and want to implement that aesthetic, but maybe at a smaller scale. “Back when Aishwarya Rai got married, a long time after that, brides would insist on flower jewellery like hers,” says Vidya. Today, the trend may be bright floral patterns, like actor Priyanka Chopra at her engagement, or pastels like cricketer Virat Kohli and actor Anushka Sharma.
Hashtags keep track of the journey of a wedding, from the engagement to the reception. Enthusiastic friends and families post pictures of the bride and groom with unique hashtags. It makes the wedding stand out, and gives it individuality, explains Rekha. “One of our clients streamed their wedding live online for all their friends and families who live in a different country, and couldn’t come down for the wedding,” says Vidya. She points out how even in South Indian weddings, clients ask for mehendi functions, pinning it down to social media influence. Later, over phone, Mumbai-based Farid Khan, founder of Wedniksha, confirms this. “Every wedding wants a baaraat these days, though it was something very Punjabi. The concept of sangeet, which was originally a Muslim tradition where the bride is applied henna while dholkis are played, has also seeped into every community.”
It’s personal
The Great Indian Wedding has been a question of prestige among social circles. Weddings and vanity almost always go hand-in-hand, however, the idea of weddings having a ‘recall value’ have just been updated to suit the digital age.
Farid, who worked with actress Sonam Kapoor, and her husband, Anand Ahuja, says, “At Sonam’s wedding, there were Jo Malone candles for every event, so you would associate the wedding with that fragrance.” Couples choose to have their initials, or their conjoined nicknames printed on giveaways, invites, door key cards of hotel rooms where guests have been put up in, and so on: Anything that would make the wedding personal.
“We see youngsters refusing to have a wedding with people they barely know,” says Tina Tharwani, co-founder of Shaadi Squad (Mumbai), the team behind the Anushka-Virat wedding, and Priyanka-Nick engagement. Her clients, she says, get quirky when it comes to giveaways and welcome gifts. One of them had safety pins in their gifts, a nod to the multiple number of pins it takes to keep a sari in place. Yet another, gave hangover kits to their guests after the sangeet.
The personalisation also reflects in the food the couples serve. Farid recalls a wedding he did in which a particular brand of whisky, Maggi, and sandwiches from street shops near Mithibai college in Mumbai, and chocolate cigarettes were served, as an ode to what the couple bonded over.
Says Farid, “People prefer candid photography at their weddings, so that they aren’t stressed. The official posed ones are taken during pre-wedding shoots.”
The good Samaritans
“Going eco-friendly is the next big thing in weddings,” says Tina. As couples from Chennai and Bengaluru have shown in the past few years, zero-waste weddings are very much possible.
“This trend also reflects in the wedding giveaways of sustainable fabric gifts, eco-friendly baskets, vegan kits. Health conscious couples experiment with sugar-free sweets too,” she says.
But the biggest impact of environment-friendly weddings can be seen in the growth of ancillary sustainable crafts, providing space to socially responsible artisans. Wooden cutlery, decor made from scraps, handmade goodies sourced from local NGOs, flowers from organic markets, and donating leftover food... It is in these little changes that Indian millennials are rejecting big fat weddings to champion the greater, greener cause.
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