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Muhurtam for moolah

The great Indian wedding has spelt brisk business for a number of professionals

Not without the mehndi The ceremony is an integral part of Indian weddings

Sometimes, there’s a lot that misses your eye when you look at the big picture. Perfection, they say, lies in the finer details. The finer details can at times be the toughest things to iron out. If Indian weddings have become a second name for booming business, there are a whole lot of professionals who are thanking the boom for the fringe benefits.

Wedding planners will tell you that deciding on the venue, caterers, guest list, jewellery and the trousseau are top priority. They will also tell you that the time, effort and money spent on ‘miscellaneous’ can take a toll. From top-of-the-line designers to your nearest darzi, mehndi artists to beauticians, and wedding choreographers to bangle sellers, everyone has a part to play. Off season and on season rates differ and bookings are done well in ad vance.

Hobbies have turned into lucrative career options for many. Kiran G. Chabria was just another youngster who enjoyed mehndi sessions until she discovered the hidden potential. A mehndi artist who’s blocked da tes on her diary for several weddings in the next few months, she also gives tuitions for aspirants! “It’s a nice feeling to be pampered when someone applies mehndi to you. There’s no Indian wedding without mehndi. The darker the colour, the more attractive it is. I started doing this for friends and then got requests to do the same for their weddings. Summer is a peak wedding season,” she says.

Professional mehndi artistes charge anywhere from Rs. 200 to Rs. 1,000 per head. The price goes up for those who work from parlours. Talking of parlours, beauticians are in demand and how! Separate order books are maintained for bri dal makeup and the charges range from Rs. 1,000 to even Rs. 15,000!

Designers who work on bridal trousseaus and wedding choreographers aren’t far behind. “A few years ago, not many were used to the concept of adding that little extra to their traditional saris. In the last three years, the requests for designer bridal blouses and lehengas have grown so much that we’ve had to maintain a separate log for the same,” says Meera Srinivasan, who specialises in bridal attire. Designs are simply drawn on paper or sketched on the lap top to give you an idea of the shape of things to come. Here again, you’ll have to shell out a few hundreds more than the normal rates.

Wedding choreographers, meanwhile, have ceased to be the odd species. Sangeets organised in true ‘filmi’ style involve rehearsals and well choreographed dance numbers. You can shell out Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 5,000 for one son g to be choreographed. The choice is yours.

If some like everything planned out down to the nitty gritties and do not mind toiling a few weeks or even months, others prefer a fuss-free wedding. “Being part of a large family, I got to see the amount of work that goes into each and every wedding and the stress that is part of it. I decided I wanted to have none of it and luckily my fiancé thought on the same lines. We trimmed down the shopping list and the other arrangements. We got married in a temple inviting about 100 close family members and friends; we later threw a dinner at a three-star hotel for the others,” says Gauri Krishnan, a systems analyst.

Still others who want to make the weddings memorable and inclusive of all the fun, there’s the ‘outsourcing’ option.

In steps a wedding planner to take you through the event and save you a few nightmares.

SANGEETHA DEVI K.

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