“India offers everything, from beautiful resorts to beaches and palaces. Yet, it does not figure on the list of top wedding destinations. What would be ideal is for the tourism ministry to tie up with wedding planners and hotels and properties to target mid-budget weddings,” says Parthip Thyagarajan, director, Wedding Sutra.

The one major deterrent has been an archaic law, according to which foreigners who want to get married in India must stay in the country for 30 days. “We get so many interested enquiries from all over the world, but those people are put off when they learn about the 30-day mandatory stay. It's a law which needs to be changed,” says Gupta of Shaadionline, who organised a wedding party for Cathy and Horace of Germany. When the couple planned their great Indian wedding, they could only take out 10 days so they first got their marriage registered in their home country and then came to India with a bunch of friends for a gala Indian wedding party, the highlight being a red bejewelled odhni.

While Kant says “it’s a good idea if tourists stay for a month, because India requires people to spend that kind of time,” he adds that because of the rise in wedding tourism, “We’re looking at the possibility of modifying this law.”

Meanwhile, there’s the big fat foreign wedding...

When Lakshmi Mittal got his daughter married in a star-studded lavish ceremony in France, the world was left gasping. Now, Indians who take their weddings more seriously than anybody else in the world are heading offshore to destinations like Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, Mauritius, Thailand and Sri Lanka, all in a bid to try something off-the-beaten-track. The trend has caught on so much that various international tourism boards are promoting themselves as wedding destinations in India.

... contd.