Cover Story OTHER STORIES RELATED TO COVER The Making of a Dream Marriage Finery Details Feisty Brides

Sheetal Ghai, 23, is not a princess. But today, she feels like one. Swathed in an azure, Swarovski-spangled J.J. Valaya lehnga, she glides past a sleek fleet of Mercs and BMWs into Athena Gardens, the 8-acre farmhouse in Delhi's Vasant Kunj that has been rented for nearly Rs 2 lakh for her wedding reception. The venue is a chiffon-draped, picture-perfect universe strung together with 3,000 orchid stems imported from Bangkok for Rs 1 lakh. As the Dom Perignon flows unendingly into fluted Solitaire, over 1,000 guests help themselves to a plural cuisine spread over 15 anthurium-crowned buffet counters. Two closed-circuit screens echo plunging, diamond-laden necklines even as intrepid cameramen perch atop cranes to freeze-frame it all.

Puja Bangur, 25, knows the pluses of being the only daughter. Her father Hari Mohan Bangur, joint managing director of Shree Cements, Kolkata, spared no expenses at her wedding last December. Puja wed Agnivesh Aggarwal, 27, a London-based businessman, at a private beach at the Fort Aguada resort in Goa. Over 600 guests were flown in chartered Jet Airways aircraft from Mumbai and Kolkata. The invite and logo that went into the personalised linen and toiletries for the groom's family were designed by M.F. Husain. A helicopter hired in Mumbai showered rose petals at the venue as the groom arrived on a caparisoned elephant from Kerala. Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Daler Mehndi and Amjad Ali Khan enthralled the guests on all four days.

DONNED IN SPLENDOUR: Sheetal and Parikshit Bardeja sparkle at their grandiose wedding reception in Delhi

Straight lifts from a Bollywood blockbuster? Song 'n' dance plagiarisms from Hum Aapke Hain Koun? Hardly. These are the flamboyant weddings of our times. Theatrical, dream-like, spectacular, mind-boggling. An unabashed declaration of social mobility and familial gait, a ticket to the social hoopla where the bride and groom assume secondary status to the swishy dos. Multi-crore extravaganzas fit for a king's coronation. It's what Radhika Chopra, faculty member at the Department of Sociology, Delhi University, calls "tradition seen with global eyes".

Indulging this shaadi-obsessed culture is a multi-crore, resource-intensive wedding industry. An industry where suave consultants and managers in natty suits, flaunting brimming date diaries and non-negotiable deadlines, sell ideas with slick Powerpoint presentations and expensive publicity folders. An industry with a heterogeneous slew of unique service providers, from card and trousseau designers and artist managers to henna experts, bangle-sellers, even tequila bar specialists and rent-a-limousine entrepreneurs. Together, they make the great Indian wedding factory.

SHOOTING STARS: Cameramen on cranes capture a wedding ceremony at Athena Gardens in Delhi

As film director Yash Chopra, who has depicted Indian wedding to indelible effect in films like Chandni, says, "Today, the size and magnificence of an Indian wedding is much bigger than what you see on the screen." Mira Nair's timely Monsoon Wedding, with an ostentatious Punjabi wedding for a theme, comes close. The marigold showers, pageantry and rancour ring a bell. Even the smooth-talking, cell phone-wielding "tentman Dubey" in the film is a prototype of the present-day wedding planner. "Indian weddings have become Bollywoodised," says Nair. "Most of them probably cost more than what it cost me to make the film."

The Sarin wedding in Delhi probably did. Under a moonlit canopy at their Chhattarpur farmhouse, a marriage made in heaven was created. Rope lights soared into the sky on thin eucalyptus trunks. Below, an immaculate expanse of green was readied to grace the fall of designer silk and staccato notes of spear stilettos. The party theme: Spanish. Cuisine: Dum Pukht, Thai, Moroccan, Chinese, Indian, Continental, American. In the construction business, the Sarins were celebrating the marriage of their son Ashim to Nidhi Verma. And this was just the pre-wedding cocktail.

Cover Story Mira Nair, Filmmaker "Most weddings probably cost more than it took me to make Monsoon Wedding." J.R. Gupta, CEO, Shaadionline "The worth of Indian wedding industry would amount to Rs 5,000 crore." J.J. Valaya, Trousseau Designer "Indian weddings are the mainstay of Indian couture." Divya Gurwara, CEO, Bridal Asia "Bridal shows are not just about lifestyle, they are big business."

Unbelievably, it took merely a day to render the staggering transformation at the farmhouse. And, of course, Meher Sarid's magic wand. A wedding planner in Delhi, Sarid's 14-member entourage converted the undulating lawns into an opulent Vegas-style setting with four truckloads of imported dried flowers and red, orange and yellow blooms, a ritzy 32 ft by 12 ft stage, Cathedral facades, ribboned sofas and umbrella flower marts on sidewalks across the 11-acre expanse. Trifles mattered: booze carts were draped in satin, the chiffon traipsing the archways tucked in a few extra folds, Spanish dancer Tanya briefed. And when the guests arrived, Sarid with kohl-lined lids and in a business suit was ready to hand out visiting cards.

Sarid's entertainment company, Sound of Music, has been in the business of fashioning fantasy weddings for the past two years. Her USP: mega-themes and concepts. The fee: 15 per cent of the total expenditure of the evening. In the premium segment where most weddings run into weeklong revelries, the expenses could go up to a couple of crores and Sarid is handling close to 30 weddings in December alone. Her one-stop shop offers every conceivable wedding product and service: flying in Russian ballet and Egyptian belly dancers, chefs from Tokyo or Indipopper Sukhbir from Dubai, even arranging a honeymoon cruise in the Caribbean. It's a business where the money is good and peak seasons (September to March in Delhi) have no Sundays. Work is just one long party.

And with an estimated 10,000 ceremonies in Delhi alone during the wedding season, there's enough room for more of her kind. Wedding wizards such as Sarid can conjure Bollywood in Delhi, Italy in Mumbai, the Caribbean in Goa, Japan in Mehrauli, and you would still have heard the half of it. It's a world where families play out lifelong fantasies with palatial sets and settings that would shame decorated Bollywood art directors: themes ranging from the Arabian nights complete with Bedouin tents and camels, a 1970s Bollywood night with Helen and Bindu clones, a Japanese theme wedding complete with pagodas, kimonos and samurai paintings. Mumbai-based Gurleine Manchanda and Ivan Rodrigues, part of the event management firm, Mansa, which diversified into wedding management two years ago, has catered to requests for Charkola dancers from Mathura, even sword-fighters from Kerala. Mansa has organised weddings for prominent business families like the Daburs, Popleys, Mittals, Hindujas, Singhanias and Poddars.