Virtual Mehndi & Feast, Reality Of Big Fat Indian Weddings Post COVID-19

Had it not been COVID time, all roads would have led to farmhouses and banquet halls for big fat Indian weddings. Wedding planners, event management companies and all those associated with the industry would have been busy blocking dates and also refusing politely due to overflowing calendars.

All this is clearly not happening. COVID has changed the whole dynamics of the wedding industry. But of course, weddings are happening and will happen. Not to be defeated, wedding planners have reworked everything in sync with COVID times.

Three companies conducted a survey in April and have now released a report on wedding trends in times of COVID-19. Chivas India, the event company Magnanimous and the platform WeddingSutra completed the study in August, Hindustan Times (HT) reported.

“We decided to conduct a study around April, when we started to see just how massively the business of weddings would be affected by the pandemic,” Kunal Avanti, co-founder of Magnanimous told HT. “We spoke to 90 brides, grooms, parents and guests and 30 industry experts from the fields of fashion, photography, makeup, F&B, venue management etc,” he added.

Findings

75% of those polled said that they planned to exclude the elderly from their celebrations

65% were opting for a virtual wedding experience instead of waiting for the pandemic to get over

Speaking to stakeholders such as fashion, jewellery, venues, photography, food and beverage on how they thought the next year (or two) would look for the industry was also a part of the study, HT reported.

Virtual experience

“The virtual wedding experience needs to improve. Automated multi-cam set-ups should capture weddings almost like an awards function. If things are planned well, the haldi or mehndi ceremony can even be held against a green screen to create the backdrop of your choice for the people viewing it on a video call. Virtual reality can be used to give someone sitting at home the experience of a wedding,” Anand Rathi, wedding photographer, founder of Reels and Frames told HT.

Food

”We recently launched our Zoom party catering which allows guests in Mumbai to invite their friends and family to join them for a meal online, and we’ll take care of sending the food, beverages and decorations, if any, to each of their guests. It’s the closest they can get to recreating the feeling of eating together… in the current scenario,” Gauri Devidayal, co-founder of Magstreet Kitchen told HT.

Even stylists and designers are going in for virtual consultancy for brides.