A marriage it is said is a coming together of two souls, which can last a lifetime. It is also a coming together of families and funds to make it a reality. It is an occasion to showcase the family’s culture and its financial strength. This has meant at times certainly families have spend amounts that could at times rival the GDP of a tiny country. There was considerable media coverage regarding the marriage of the daughter of politician who spent Rs 500 crore on the occasion. There was considerable negative press coverage and resulted in a great deal of debate when Ranjeet Ranjan, the Congress MP from Supaul in Bihar, introduced a bill in Parliament aiming to curtail the lavishness of Indian weddings.
The private member’s bill, which was submitted in Parliament last July was approved by President Pranab Mukherjee and now returns to Parliament for discussion.
Reactions from wedding planners in Goa ranged between mild amusement and irritation. Shyam Haridas, director of Lucros Event Management felt as a private members bill it would not pass. He said a wedding was always a personal matter and it was about two souls and families coming together. It was, he believed entirely up to the families to decide the budget.
Mr Haridas said “One has to have some perspective. Jobs are created by weddings, hotel rooms are sold, vendors supply a lot of the material and fabrication of props generates revenue. All this creates employment. Are you willing to let all this collapse because some politician spends extravagantly and you have decided to rein in the expenditure of people who have worked and earned money honestly and now wish to spend on a very important occasion.”
A destination wedding for which Goa is very famous he believed would not be possible in such a budget. Usually in a wedding, he said the biggest expenditure was always for the hotel rooms which depended on the number of rooms and duration of stay and yes the numbers of stars of the hotel. In most Indian weddings, such expenditure is handled by the parents of the couple. Airfares are also handled by the party because if planners arrange for it, they will earn a pretty packet as commission from the airlines. Food is usually included in the hotel room rate. The fabrication, props, the execution of the event is handled by the wedding planner. Such arrangements, Shyam said were impossible in Rs 5 lakh to arrange a destination wedding. In a Rs 5 lakh budget, the couple will have to hire a small hall, close family members, limited venue décor. But it then begs the question if people would be interested in doing this on what is possibly the most important day of their lives. The party would spend the most on the hall and food.
Sebi Lewis of Celebration Needs said this bill would affect everyone. This would, he said make the government reduce the rates for food, décor to make it fall within the budget provided. This budget was what Goans usually spend and was not the budget of a destination wedding. People, he believed who were now coming to India for a destination wedding would stop thus depriving the country of valuable foreign exchange and employment for locals. Mr Lewis said “If it is passed then a large percentage of that business will be conducted in cash.”
Another wedding planner who did not want to come on record said the business in Goa was approximately valued at around Rs 200 crore and this bill could destroy the livelihoods of several families.
Lester Melo of Weddings and Dreams said the hall and food was always the most expensive. Local weddings had budgets of around 4-5 lakh with lower middle class families usually spending something around that. A hall like Kesarwal usually had food priced at around Rs 50 which could be handled if there was control on the number of guests. A Goan wedding usually had around 700 people coming which accounted for a large percentage of the budget. In 5 star hotels, he said a band could charge anywhere between Rs 40-50,000 and could go up to Rs 90,000. A decent wedding, Mr Melo said was not cheap. A destination wedding would add several zero’s to that five lakh figure.
Perhaps one could end with a rather irritated Francis Serrao, Crosscraft Entertainment who said “How can one define and tell me what to spend on a wedding, funeral etc. It will then mean the wedding ceremony at a church will be called a wedding and classifying the party afterwards as a get together of friends and relatives to circumvent this. It will happen. People will also say that they have not take money from the government so they cannot dictate how their monies ought to be spent”.
The fate of this bill will be known shortly. The general consensus is that it will fail but then stranger things have happened.
