At wedding season this year, don’t be surprised if some receptions have fewer than 100 guests. Don’t balk if the décor and buffet are pared down. And do congratulate the bride and groom a little extra if other over-the-top frills are missing. They’ve probably funded the whole shindig out of their own pocket.
Even as big weddings remain the norm, more Indians are opting to self-finance their weddings, with zero financial input and expectations from the parents. A survey conducted by loan provider IndiaLends and matrimony website Betterhalf late last year polled 2,100 people between ages 21 and 35. About 70% of them said they wanted a traditional wedding ceremony but would like to fund it themselves. The new #CoupleGoals: Financial independence and greater autonomy in how married life plays out.
Strategy and finance managers Sindhura Deverakonda and Pranjal Kalita met at work in Hyderabad and dated for four years before getting married in Visakhapatnam in December 2019. She’s from Andhra Pradesh. He’s from Assam. He was 30 then. She was 28. They knew that a union would be challenging enough for their families. “We didn’t want unnecessary rituals and expectations of gifts on either side,” Deverakonda says. Self-funding the wedding seemed like a good way to not burden families with arrangements.
Each took a bank loan, cumulatively amounting to ₹10 lakh, and aimed to get married just two months after the engagement. Four relatives from Kalita’s side flew in from Guwahati for the ceremony. The couple held a small reception in the groom’s hometown later. And they didn’t have a lorry full of presents – just generic tea sets and vases. “Hardly anything that would qualify as a gift,” says Deverakonda. “The wedding was so low-key, people weren’t convinced we were actually settling down.”
{{/usCountry}}Each took a bank loan, cumulatively amounting to ₹10 lakh, and aimed to get married just two months after the engagement. Four relatives from Kalita’s side flew in from Guwahati for the ceremony. The couple held a small reception in the groom’s hometown later. And they didn’t have a lorry full of presents – just generic tea sets and vases. “Hardly anything that would qualify as a gift,” says Deverakonda. “The wedding was so low-key, people weren’t convinced we were actually settling down.”
{{/usCountry}}Keeping a wedding small and paying for it yourself doesn’t imply disrespect to each other’s families, the couple believes. Instead, it brings families closer, on more even terms. “There’s real stuff to deal with in a marriage, not just mushy love,” says Kalita. “We take all our decisions as a team, without relying on others.” The couple now lives in Hyderabad and have a five-month-old daughter. They have no regrets about the wedding.
Shilpi Dey and Rohit Singh were doing things their way long before their wedding day. She’s Bengali, 29 and is a media studies lecturer. He’s from Uttar Pradesh, 30 and line-producer in Bollywood. They met in their teens, dated for 15 years and overcame stiff family opposition by planning and funding their wedding two years ago. “Covid had affected our finances, but we cashed our fixed-deposits and all our savings,” Dey recalls. Their budget of ₹7.5 lakh stretched out just enough for a traditional Bengali ceremony in Mumbai for 150 guests.
It took a year of meticulous, creative planning. “One month, we bought one ring. The next month, we bought the other,” says Dey. “The month after, we booked the venue, then went on to buy our clothes. My wedding sari cost ₹4,000.” The couple didn’t opt for an expensive wedding photography or additional events such as a sangeet or mehendi. There was no elaborate welcome for Rohit either – he walked up to the mandap himself. “None of this was important,” she says. A few relatives declined to attend when they learnt that the bride’s family (her wealthy father) wasn’t paying for the festivities. It also meant that she was coordinating some details “right until the pheras”. But they loved every minute of it.
Most couples who choose to foot the bill for their big day tend to be working professionals who have chosen their partners themselves. “They are more practical and careful about how they spend their money, even on a wedding,” says Chirag Shah. The 30-year-old client solutions and marketing manager in Mumbai, is an only child and the sole earning member of his family. So, when the time came to marry Nikita Thakkar, 30, a banking business consultant, in 2021, after dating for 10 years, he knew there was no pot of gold in the back of the family vault.
“I’d been planning for it at the back of my mind all along,” he says. He set up a wedding fund years in advance, taking money-management tips from Thakkar. For the wedding, they decided that they’d only spend on what would be useful after the event too. Thakkar chose a lehenga with a modest price tag, buying an additional blouse so she could rewear the outfit. She didn’t accept excessive jewellery from Chirag’s family – just a token few items. They surveyed close to 10 vendors for each purchase (even centrepieces). She handled much of the execution, comparison-shopping and hustling so that they put on a sangeet night within ₹90,000. There were 150 guests at the reception, and did away with frills such as a wedding planner and an expensive trousseau. “As someone who gets his act together only at the last minute, it was a different adventure for me,” Shah says. The wedding guests loved the celebration. The Thakkars also managed their finances well enough to buy and furnish an apartment in Mumbai.
In Mumbai, Urvija Ghuriye, 30, had decided to pay for her own wedding even before she’d found a suitable groom. So, when she met chartered accountant Akshay Bhuwania, 32, at German-language classes in 2017, and found that he felt the same way, she was ecstatic. “We wanted our parents to chill, invite whoever they wanted to,” Ghuriye says. “It was about stepping up and taking responsibility.”
The 2022 wedding was a two-day affair and had 200 guests. Ghuriye managed happily without professional makeup, hair and draping. She took care of the sangeet choreography too. The couple managed food tastings, set-up and shopping. Ghuriye told her parents that this was the best the couple could do on their own steam. “Should anyone complain, it’s on me, not you.” They had a son last year, and this December, they are prepping for another self-arranged celebration, for overseas relatives and friends who couldn’t make it to the wedding.
Footing the bill for one’s own wedding celebration hits different, the couples say. There’s less guilt about squandering the family money, fewer vetoes on key decisions such as what to wear and whom to invite, less drama from imagined slights playing out in the background. Additionally, both men and women in India are marrying later in life. Men and women are better educated, earning their own money and saving it. “There is a different pride in executing your own wedding and doing it your way,” says Dey. “These are real goals.”
- BACK IN THE DAYKaushal and Bharat Sovani married in 2003 on their own terms, with their own money. It was unheard of in Kaushl’s Kutchi-Oswal community, but she’d seen how much her siblings’ weddings cost and wanted no part of it. Bharat, a photographer from Maharashtra was on board with the idea. The only regret, 20 years on: he forgot to book the Udipi banquet hall for lunch. “We had to send guests in batches into the restaurant, much to the amazement of the staff and owners!”