SOCIETY

Delhi gears up for the mother of all wedding days

     New Delhi: Overbooked venues, frantic brides crying mad for the perfect trousseau and a harassed traffic department - the Indian capital is bracing up for the mother of all wedding dates. Over 30,000 couples across New Delhi will tie the knot on November 27-described by Hindu astrologers and priests as the most auspicious day for weddings in 12 years. While every nook and cranny of the city is being decked up for one ceremony or the other, priests are working overtime, juggling their almost unending appointments.

     Acharya Devi Lal, a priest explained that most Hindus would never give up a chance to ensure that the planets favored their conjugal bonds. Lal said that it was after a long time that the governing planets of matrimony had formed such a unique confluence. "It is all about the placement of stars. According to the placement of stars this year the auspicious time lasts only for a few hours and it will be on the 27th of this month," Lal said on Thursday (November 24). And it's not just the young couples who are thanking the stars, the massive rush to get married has led to a huge boost for the marriage industry. Garments makers and jewelers have seen a 20 to 25 percent rise in sales this season. Gold, an absolute essential for any Hindu marriage, has been at its peak rate but the marriage stars have ensured that the cash registers kept ringing. The God's have, however, apparently smiled the most on the fashion connoisseurs, who have registered an over 45 percent jump in profits as a record number of expatriates coming into India for wedding places huge orders. Most boutiques are packed with brides, relative or wedding invitees looking for the perfect dress. Rasna Kahai, who runs 'Kapra', one of the capital's most popular designer shops, said she has barely been off the phone in over two days dealing queries about finished orders and getting details of new ones. "Even the brides when they have to get their clothes ready...they keep calling us, every hour, every day till they get the stuff," Kahai said.

     Marriages in India are expensive affairs, running into anything between a few hundred thousands to a billion rupees. Besides gold and dowry, which are gifts presented to the bride from her family; a large chunk of it is spent on marriage venues. And as over-booked hotels turn away people, its boom time again for the farmhouses and tent-house owners. New Delhi's roads are clogged, as they are not equipped to deal with the mega rush. People like Amrita Bedi, who went for the wedding of a friend's daughter on Thursday, also an auspicious date with about 12,000 weddings, say they have little choice. "We have been waiting for hours but what to do. I wonder if the groom and bride themselves will be able to reach the venue," Bedi said. Seventy percent of New Delhi's nearly 200 farmhouses and banquet halls are conducting over four marriages a day and with a four- hour slot to accommodate at least 600 guests costing a minimum $ 5000, the profits have definitely been good. Ken, the owner of a farmhouse in south Delhi, said the rush this year has taken them aback, forcing them to refuse people. "Orders are flowing like anything but we have no place. The priests have calculated as many as 50,000 weddings on a single day so where will the people go. Everyone wants that they get a good place, at good rates," he said. In India there is no greater event in a family than a wedding. Often arranged with Byzantine complexity, they best display the almost reason-defying permutations and combinations of the Indian social system and govern everything from redistribution of wealth to building and restructuring social alignments. Amongst Hindus the wedding season usually runs from May to mid- December, with the bulk of ceremonies taking place once the monsoons are over.
-Nov 25, 2005

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