Once upon a time, US dollars went a long way in India. Even weddings, long expensive in local terms, could be staged far more cheaply in India than in the US. Not any more. The wedding planners have arrived, and everybody wants a big extravaganza
:
India’s burgeoning middle class – now 300 million strong – are turning weddings into showcases of their growing disposable incomes and newfound appetites for the goodies of the global marketplace.The largesse has spawned an $11 billion wedding industry, growing at 25 percent annually and beginning to rival the US industry valued at $50 billion.
The minimum budget for a wedding ceremony is $34,000, say wedding planners, while the upper-middle and rich classes are known to spend upward of $2 million. (The average American wedding costs $26,327.) This doesn’t include cash and valuables given as part of a dowry. [Link]
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p>The latest fad is to stage the whole shebang on pontoons, putting family and friends on a veritable flotilla of flaunted wealth
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p>If you consider the fact that India’s middle class are those considered to be earning “$4,545 to $23,000 a year”, weddings are priced comparably to an Ivy League education in the US. To “help out” banks are offering specialized wedding loans (at high rates, I’m sure):
GE Money India has introduced an “auspicious” personal loan, a quick and easy loan exclusively for weddings. [Link]
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p>Of course, the more money you have, the more you want to show it off:
At a wedding held in a five-star New Delhi hotel last winter, the groom stepped out of a two-door BMW sports car, specially flown in from Europe for the occasion. Spanish flamenco dancers, fresh orchids from Thailand, ice sculptures, even second-tier Bollywood stars paid to mingle – all are just some of the flourishes seen at recent Indian weddings.
Forget being down-to-earth. The latest fad is to stage the whole shebang on pontoons, putting family and friends on a veritable flotilla of flaunted wealth. “We receive such ‘unusual’ requests all the time,” says Meher Sarid, a wedding planner in New Delhi. “It’s not unusual anymore…” [Link]
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p>If this is overwhelming, don’t worry, there’s a vendor out there to help you with everything you need:
Gurgaon, a city built on new-economy money, will boast India’s first wedding mall in 2006, built at a cost of $16 million and with 400 stores. Eight more wedding malls are being planned around the country…. the number of participants in Bridal Asia has doubled to 80 and this October, she expects 60,000 visitors at the exhibition, which will sprawl over 40,000 sq. ft.. There are several such annual wedding extravaganzas, heralding the beginning of the wedding season with a mix of traditional and international offerings. Together, they rake in at least $50 million in sales.[Link]
I know it’s judgemental, but honestly, I’m appalled. Weddings were expensive enough for Indians before, but this is truly a hard burden to expect a middle-class Indian to bear. NRIs are one thing, but …
gross. all this new indian materialism and superficiality makes me want to hurl.
Before everyone here erupts into “how shameful this is(which is slightly accurate) and how pathetic Indians are (usual refrain on sepiamutiny
Here are some aspects of social life/ weddings to consider…(for pure analytical fun)
Social life in busines families and other kinship situations is closely linked to economic relationships too. Its improtant to udnerstand the entertaning budget of corporates in India is not very high, as social relationships follow kinship , rather than economic relationships (different from a society like a country like the US. A fair comparison would be to combine wedding budgets with entertaining budgets in both situations, make a currecy adjustment,create a per wedding cost unit, and my guess is there would be relative parity…(something to think about the effect of different social dynamics)
Marriage is a little different in the Indian from the casual entering into a disposable relationship in more “advanced” socieities.
Do we spend more on durable goods vs disposable goods? Are there any studies on this consumer behavior?
Important to factor this into the marriage discussion as the everage person in the west must budget for more than one marriage in his/her lifetime and hence there would be prudence in keeping costs a little more balanced. Also the cost of dating must be linked to the cost of mating. The pressure to find a mate induces dating costs, which is a huge industry. That cost must be included in comparing “wedding project costs” or if we would like a bigger framework, a “mating project cost”
Not costing prep while costing projects is very faulty. This can include phone calls, eating out, gifts, etc etc….These costs do not exist in the monstrous proportions in a traditional framwork, as they do in a more modern world.
Also, the cost of grooming,, so they look presentable to potential partners is an entire industry (and is beginning to be even more so in India) but the sheer existence of the “arranged marriage” system reduces the constant ongoing costs of such endeavors. (Am pretty sure cosmetics industry data for unmarried women would totoally bear out this hypothesis)
There are many other such purely economic considerations….without including which, such economic analysis is much like multivariate analysis with two variabels, while throwing out 10 variables, as it would be too diffcult to create an equaltion with all of them..
Its probably better to use game theory rather than multivariate analysis to understand marriage and economics in the two very different societies.
Heck, it can even be a the topic for a fun dissertation
Not related……
what happened to the H1-B post u had a little while ago !!!!
Uh Materialism and superficiialty are not new in the subcontinent. The levels are just being magnified now. I would actually say that India is probably one of the most materialistic civilizations where prestige and status is defined by wealth and all that good stuff. This idea that indians are some really spiritual people is just marketing and desi people shouldnt fall into this Orientalist type thinking.
Arzan – as soon as I put it up, I realized it was a dupe (Abhi had covered this band before) and I deleted it.
gross. all this new indian materialism and superficiality makes me want to hurl.
But why? We’ve lived in poverty for twenty dang generations. Lets have a little fun!
It’s usually the bride’s family that’s expected to shoulder the financial burden of all this excess, isn’t it? When one stops to consider that this sort of display may play into sex-selective abortion and differential treatment of girl-children, one really can’t dismiss it as harmless frivolity.
Amba, you are absolutely correct, actually. Please excuse MY frivolous comment. The biggest reason Punjabi female-male ratios are 750/1000 (EVEN among highly educated and wealthy people– the Defence Colony/ Greater Kailash crowd) is becuase the burden for the wedding (and dowry) falls on the daughter. It is a prime factor in hidden holocaust–the 100 million women missing, as Amartya Sen put it.
It is equally bad in much of North India too.
gross. all this new indian materialism
Oh? And what are we Indians supposed to be? Humans or Sadhus or naked fakirs?
You’d much rather see us on a bed of nails in a loin cloth, eh?
Indians are humans too. 😀
I am not sure how things stand with north Indians but amongst Southies I think its almost always the groom’s family that bears the costs of the wedding. If I am not mistaken, the bride’s family does the engagement and the groom’s family does the wedding.
In any case, while ruminating on this subject a wee bit, I was wondering, Indians don’t really get out and have fun that much besides just sitting around waiting for the next religious festival to show up. And IMHO its rare to see Indians really let their hair down and have some fun. Weddings may be an exception – so if people wanna splurge, I say let ’em.
I am not sure how things stand with north Indians but amongst Southies I think its almost always the groom’s family that bears the costs of the wedding. If I am not mistaken, the bride’s family does the engagement and the groom’s family does the wedding.
Umm… MS I’m not sure if thats entirely correct. I’m mallu, and my friend who is also mallu is getting married in Jan 2006. Her family has to pay for the wedding not the groom’s. I don’t know about the engagement though.
Coming back to the topic. I think there is added pressure when your an NRI to make your wedding ultra expensive to show your relatives that you are doing well financially. This is only for the older generations like our parents though. The whole status thing is quiet blown out of proportion in kerala amongst Christians.
Ok. So I guess I should narrow it down to maybe Mallu Christians then and if that doesn’t fit the bill then narrow it down further to just my family. ;). But AFAIK, amongst mallu X’tians(or maybe mallu Cahtolics), its as I mentioned, engagement = bride’s expense; wedding = groom’s expense.
We actually had this debate already a couple of months ago, as veteran Mutineers will remember…..
A couple of points:
Absolutely correct. Also, “ego” has a huge factor on the wish for big weddings — a) To show off one’s alleged wealth, b) so that people/community/”samaaj” don’t think that one is too miserly to splash out on an expensive wedding for one’s children, or c) so that nobody else thinks horror of horrors, that one “can’t afford it”.
Yes. Unless it’s a “real” love marriage, it’s much more of an out-and-out “business arrangement”. Let’s not get too sanctimonious here 😉
Ah, but this article isn’t about NRIs, it’s about locals. It’s about people earning a total of $6,000 / yr spending $36,000 on a wedding. Think about it, that’s like earning $50,000 / yr in the US and spending $300,000 on your wedding. Even as a business proposition, this makes very little sense. This means a wedding is like buying a house, or going to law school, but without the return on investment that accompanies the first two.
The Hindu reformer Dayanand Saraswati of the Arya Samaj (which has a big following among Hindu Punjabis) instituted a very simple wedding ceremony. However, like a rock sitting in pond for a thousand years whose core never becomes wet, the Punjabis still insist on throwing grand, lavish weddings and demanding hefty dowry.
In South India, female infanticide is not as bad as it is in North India. Amartya Sen drew a line which shows how much more endemic infanticide is in the North and West in comparison to the South and East. From what I understand today, however, the female/male ratio is declining in Tamil Nadu as well. So the South may yet follow the barbaric North.
A shortage of brides means that many men go without wives, and may lead to the reinstituting of bride price, which is the very opposite of dowry. Men in Harayana (which has a female/male sex ratio as bad as Punjab) are headed to Bihar and elsewhere looking for brides.
On an interesting side note, in some quarters of Nigerian society the guy does have to pay the woman’s family a “bride price”, and they even have a special “wine” ceremony where the guy practically has to fight his way through a crowd of her relatives (who pretend he’s not good enough for the bride), get down on his knees and beg her to let him marry her.
I just thought I’d mention it as an example of how things are marriage-wise when the power is in the hands of the other party. Maybe if Indian men had to do this sort of thing too, they’d have a little more value for the women in their lives.
Just a semi-serious/semi-joking example.
A.k.a. desi party with notties.
Well said. I should point out that in Kerala, which has a longstanding matrilineal system, the female male ratio is 105-100, which puts it in line with the West and Japan.
Though there is a slightly higher likelihood that any given fetus will be male, it is well established that a female fetus is less likeley to miscarry.
When all things are equal, women also live longer.
In India, there is a bias against women in healthcare as well.
Sub-saharan Africa has a much better ratio than India incidentally–female infanticide is not commonplace.
If you were to ask a middle class Indian what his biggest expense in life will be, the beti’s shaadi will likely be #1 or #2.
ms and shok_pact…
i think it depends on the family, but i am more inclined to agree with ms and can testify that some southie families do go half-half on the wedding. I am southie and my sister’s and brother-in-law’s families shared the expenses. Same with my chittipa and his wife.
But i’ve also heard of some southie families where the groom’s family refuses to contribute out of pride, ego, etc. So i guess it just depends on how educated and open-minded the families are.
Ennis, I think the ‘return on investment’ that these extravagant weddings are supposed to bring is seeing a daughter settled in a high-status family. The ideal marriage alliance in north India is one where the groom’s family is of slightly higher status than the bride’s, and the bride’s family is prepared to shell out big bucks in order to attract the best candidates. In practice, it often means that the family is almost bankrupted by the cost of the wedding and then has to submit to ongoing dowry demands, so whatever benefits that accrue to the bride’s side are far outweighed by the costs.
I recall reading somewhere that exorbitant dowry demands have spread to a lot of Indian communities where either a nominal dowry or bride-price used to be the norm. That may be why sex-ratios in south India are worsening.
I don’t think it’s all that surprising that sex-ratios are so skewed in affluent, educated communities: the fact that the wealthy limit the size of their families probably has something to do with this. If you’re going to have five children, it’s not so bad if a couple are girls. If you’re only going to have two and you belong to a community in which dowry is the norm, two daughters will ruin you, you’ll break even with a son and a daughter, and two boys will let you come out ahead financially.
The sex ratio in India is skewed mainly because of selective abortions (Foeticide) not female infanticide.
It is just another industry and hence should not be looked down upon. Ofcourse everybody has a choice, a decision to make. Imagine the number of people involved into ‘showing grooms and brides’, and earning a coll 10k when a match is made, the whole huge wedding with marriage halls being booked, musicians being hired, catereres getting some business, its just a huge industry. However, there is a need to alter the mindset of the population that mixed marriages aren’t bad. Its not only an issue in India, its an issue all over the world that needs to be addressed immdiately.
damn .. what the hell am i doing here, i should be in india!
2 million duckets? And that on an arranged marriage?
… that is one expensive lay.
I like my option better – my parents and the bride and her parents somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. That should be much less than the average $26k quoted. Or, even Prince Edward Island would do quite nicely. Just imagine what you could do with all the money saved – start an IRA account, trust fund for kids, etc…
SONIA……. SHAME SHAME
my opinion as a british asian women is that the over the top extravagant weddings are just an insurity think for asians that feel that they have to prove to the world how well they are doing, some might argue that its the most special day a couple can have and so why shouldnt it be over the top and expensive for one because sometimes its the simple things in life that make you truly happy. in the north of england ie newcastle it is becoming a status symbol to how big your daughters wedding is, but i think its more a keeping up with the jones’s and their failings as asians in the north have to be compensated with these weddings, as a asian from the south ie london you have to realise your far poorer than us in the south so stop prtending and spending your life savings on proving you are just as good as us YOUR NOT!!!! get over it!.
I think that punjabi marriages are very beaqutiful …. yeah they may cost more than what people in other countries spend on their weddings but think about it …….. there are soo many customs and traditions that the Punjabi’s take into account …… e.g sagai (book a hall, buy gifts and sweets for other family), mehandhi (hire mehendhiwalas, they dont come cheap), ladies night (book a hall, hire a DJ), marriage (clothes for bride or groom, jewelery often 22 carat gold, hire of a venue or hall, hire of a DJ) and many more items such as the reception and gifting to both families ……… slowly the costs of these add up …… If Punjabi’s don’t save the money for this expensive wedding then Punjabi weddings would be nothing, they would not be notted as one of the most elegant weding processions around the world and they would not last for the week that they currently do. One thing that i do not agree with is the fact that is the bride’s family that takes on most of the expenses ….. the groom’s family only pays for the gifts that they buy the girl, their ladies night and the reception, if they choose to hold a reception.
well someone was talkin abt marriage economics as a dissertation… well im doin tht.. though its region specific
As young women blazing to get my rights in this world I used to have heated debates with my mum on the issue of dowry and wedding expenses. My mum had the following to say 1) Her father was a landed agriculturist, coming from a family with 7 children, dividing the agricultural land would have served her no purpose as once she move to her husband’s home there is no way she could tend to it and it would definitely go to ruins if it is let out on lease. Division also makes it economically nonviable for the remaining family. So her dowry and gold was actually her inheritance. 2) As far as marriage expenses are concerned, she had the following to say: think about all the birthdays that you insist on celebrating, the average age of an Indian is round 65 if you combine all that into one event work out how much you spend. Plus for most Indians it’s once in a life time event. Again the gold is never bought at the time of the wedding most of it bought over a period of 20-25 years so it is inaccurate to include it into wedding expenses and over such large periods it is actually an investment. Yes I do agree that in the past 6-7 years weddings have become lavish. Not every one does a $25k. That number is way off the mark for an average middle class Indian, a realistic number is around 50% of that. Its not just the parents alone that are to blame. The youngsters today want it, we are south Indians and as such mehndi and sangeeth are not a part of our customs, but my younger sis wanted it and and my parents indulged her. After all how many fathers can resist their baby girls. Add to it the emotional turmoil that the daughter will be going away and parent often go overboard. I will not deny that in many cases the grooms side misuse the parental affections and make demands they have no business making. But I guess it all depends on how strong the girls parents are. In both our cases we are professionally qualified and held good jobs, so my parents outright refused any proposals that even hinted at demands. My father being a prudent man had made made investments in our names that was ours and no one could touch it, not only that he actually drilled finance and numbers into our heads. The fact that he made both of us file our own taxes says it all i guess. Coming back to the topic, I see no harm if it is affordable, but when it goes to an extent that it becomes a burden it has to be stopped. And individuals have to put a stop to it. There is no way you can tell the society not to spend on this or that. I mean has any one ever dictated to others which car to buy? Can you seriously tell Americans to ban mercs? Contrary to what accountants tell us a car is not an investment. Why should wedding expense be any different?
AMBA, i dont know how far u r aware.In South India there z a community in which groom family conduct marriage. it z not the bride’s marriage. here they welcome their new member with grt celebration n joy. it does nt mean that they hate male baby. or male to female ratio change.. male -female ratio varies only b’coz they think female as dependent. N still there z no place on earth to claim secured fro female.
listen all you people…indians are traditional type people…all you westernized stuck up people could learn a thing of two from…we ensure extravagant weddings because according to our belief “you only get married once”…so while you americans might critize the amount being spent on an indian wedding, consider the amount you all spend on getting married today, then divorced tomorrow, then married again and on & on until someone draws it to your attention!! Having a lavish wedding is a joy that a father dreams off from the time his soon to be son-in-law asks for his daughter’s hand in marriage…we dont get married, then tell the folks…we get the folks permission before venturing into marriage…we believe in family/santity of marriage and traditions….you all should actually take a page out of our books… And for those who think “indians” dont go out much….clearly u must be going to the wrong places, maybe we like having fun instead of surronding ourselves with a social drink with people who just going to scrutunize us and prob sleeping with our husbands too;)… you all stand to learn alot from us indians!!!
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