The Ministry of Tourism has taken the cue and though it shares no official figures on inbound wedding tourism, it is considered the market for the future. Says Amitabh Kant, joint secretary, Ministry of Tourism: “We are taking wedding tourism very seriously and promoting it in all our foreign offices abroad and also looking at more initiatives to sell India as a top wedding destination.”

The Ministry is trying to market India’s festive spirit as its USP. “India has the best of food, culture and festivities and there’s a huge sense of drama, which is what international tourists love. People are coming in with chartered planes for the complete Indian experience of heritage hotels, elephants and camels. Bollywood has also helped a lot in generating interest in Indian weddings and getting tourist inflow,” Kant adds.

Most international couples making their way to India are looking out for two types of Indian weddings: the Maharaja Wedding and the Brahminical Wedding. The Maharaja Wedding experience is replete with riches, exoticism and palaces while the Brahminical wedding is all about spirituality, mysticism and Vedic rites. Needless to say, the much-speculated wedding extravaganza of Liz Hurley and Arun Nayar in February would fall in the Maharaja Wedding category, with the groom all set to arrive on a white horse, flanked by camels and elephants at the majestic Devi Garh Palace at Udaipur.

Even the hotel industry, typically oriented towards conventions, corporate meetings and sporting events, has realised the benefits of joining the wedding party. Says Vasudha Sondhi, VP Sales, HRH Group of Hotels, Rajasthan, which has hosted several such international weddings in Udaipur: “The wedding industry constitutes a fairly large segment of our total revenues. We have a lot of domestic and international traffic at peak wedding season. We're offering regal wedding venues and we like to give our clients customised packages. People come to our hotels for not only weddings, but also sometimes to retake their vows”

... contd.