The great Indian wedding season is upon us. While several million will get married, the focus of our cover story is on the ones that have gone mega in terms of scale—with staggering guest-lists, palace-like décor, ultra-chic designer wear, and the kind of budgets that can buy several jet planes.
The National Council of Applied Economic Research has estimated the business to be around Rs 50,000 crore, and increasing at about 25 per cent every year. Boggling since it could, in a few years, be seriously giving the American wedding industry, valued at $ 50 billion annually, a run for its money.
A Mumbai-based wedding planner who caters to the city’s elite has even said that those who can afford do not discuss prices. They want their paparazzi-hyped weddings to match up with the best in the world. Stuff like deciding rates, and payments are dealt with by junior staff. The wedding planner feels it’s like getting a blank cheque. The story’s been written with much style by Contributing Editor Rakesh K. Simha.
From the razzle-dazzle of the weddings, we shift gears to move into the world of glamour cars. These can usually kill with their looks. Some are sleek beauties, some are aristocratic studs. The Get-With-It crowds are getting to garage them, sometimes at prices that appear to hit the roof, but only just. Easy financing schemes, EMIs that suit pockets that lack no depth, and reasonable interest rates are pushing more and more people to go for the top numbers in the market. Check out these beauties, like speed, they thrill.
Indrani Talukdar who’s moving out of Melbourne has done one of her last pieces for INDIA EMPIRE, one on Indian ethnic wear stores in a quaint little street in that southern Australian city. These are shops that draw clientele from near and far, even a few thousand miles away, and their charm seems very much on the rise, especially with the average Australian beginning to fall for it.
All of these articles and much more make for a good read.
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Editor
Sayantan
Chakravarty
Consulting
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Mona Mathur Ali
Rakesh K. Simha
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Chatterjee, Dharminder Diwan, Arnelle Hartenstein (all
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Zealand), Ramesh Mathew (Qatar), Shuchi Sinha (Switzerland),
Indrani Talukdar
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Saba
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