Weddings Get Glitz Back As Budgets Surge

New Delhi: Marriages might be made in heaven but for those on the earth, the occasion to celebrate the exchange of vows is back to being an expensive affair. And no one’s complaining. Not too long ago, the world watched in awe as business tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s son Anant Ambani tied the knot with Radhika Merchant in a whopping Rs5,000-crore affair.

While those are astronomical numbers, the middle class and upper middle class, too, joined the party through 2024 and the lull in the wedding market seen in 2020-2021 appears to be a thing of the past.

According to a Justdial report released on December 24, metropolitan cities drove 34 per cent growth in demand for wedding services with the national capital dominating with a 44 per cent rise in wedding searches and 4x surge in resort venue searches. Till November this year, wedding budgets saw a 6.7 per cent increase year-on-year with the average spend at Rs35.6 lakh, according to a survey done by all-in-one wedding planning solutions provider WedMeGood, which caters to 1.8 million monthly users across its web and app platforms.

Numbers shared by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) suggest a similar trend. The average wedding spend in 2022 was about Rs20 lakh, in 2023 it rose to Rs25 lakh, whereas this year it went up further to Rs30 lakh per wedding, CAIT Founder and General Secretary Praveen Khandelwal told media. Gold and jewellery rates, too, went up through the year, reflective of the change in mindset so far as wedding spends are concerned. The country’s gold imports recorded an over four-fold increase to USD 14.86 billion in November, according to commerce ministry data. Gold prices, which were about Rs63,500 per 10 grams in January, are hovering around Rs80,000 in December.

The increase in imports was mainly on account of festival and wedding demands, as per the data. Jewellers said not just gold, the demand for alternative jewellery, too, went up this year. Sheetika Tondon, Founder of Amaltas Jewels -- a contemporary jewellery brand offering certified lab-grown diamond ornaments -- said, “As gold prices continue to soar, Indian jewellers are seeing a shift in consumer behaviour, particularly in the wedding sector.