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

Sabu Cyril, a Chennai-based art director who designed the 1996 Miss World stage in Bangalore has often had to counter offers from industrialists in Coimbatore to put up larger-than-life pandals. "They are ready to dish out Rs 12 lakh for the stage alone," says Cyril. "To most, even this is a small amount for a structure that will be pulled down later." But today "even the middle class wants designer weddings", says the portly Harkirat Chaudhry, Aucky to clients, known for her trousseau-packs and handcrafted fibreglass and sunboard invitation cards. Aucky's studio in Delhi is a virtual godown of bric-a-brac she has crafted and collected over 21 years. Ganeshas, brass lamps and ornate peacock pens leap out of her "Pandora's boxes". Books on everything from Indian crafts and food to cities come in handy while looking up new ideas for fabricating "sea theme weddings or pandals like the Westminster or the Colosseum".

PREEN SHOW: A peacock theme qawwali night organised by Sarid for a mehndi ceremony

It's hard work but one that is irrefutably gratifying. Ask Mumbai-based Madhulika Mathur, 27, an MBA and product of Delhi's School of Planning and Architecture, who gave up a promising career in corporate finance to start weddingsutra.com, a wedding portal. She hasn't regretted the decision. Neither has Jai Raj Gupta, an IIM graduate, now CEO, Shaadionline, a complete wedding services company set up in April this year. Promoted by Worldcast Technologies and backed by biotech entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Quadra Advisory's marketing man Shunu Sen, the company has collected information on rituals and customs of over 35 communities with a listing of over 3,000 vendors. Gupta can't stop repeating, "This is one industry that will never fold up because people will never stop getting married." As per estimates, over 10 million couples get married in India each year.

According to a report in the Economist last year, the Asian wedding industry was worth "11 billion dollars with an annual growth of 25 per cent". "A significant chunk is from the Indian subcontinent," says Mukesh Sharma, head of the International Trade and Exhibition (ITE) Group in India that held the Bride & Groom show in Delhi this year. It's difficult to estimate the worth of the Indian industry because people have no budgets when it comes to weddings. But during the wedding season "in Delhi alone, the services and shopping would amount to Rs 500 crore", avers Gupta.

STAR STRUCK: Shah Rukh Khan with a guest at the Bangur wedding in Goa

For the wedding market, this is a captive consumer group now being targeted by a growing portfolio of bridal shows and wedding magazines. One that jewellers like Tanishq cannot ignore. Harish Bhat, vice-president, sales and marketing, admits about 20 per cent of Tanishq's advertising budget is set aside for the bridal season. "There are people who walk in and buy seven diamond sets across the counter, spending up to Rs 50 lakh at one go," says Deepak Mehra, a scion of Delhi's Mehrasons jewellers.

It's a no holds-barred world where families have no qualms about spending over Rs 14 lakh on floral décor alone, which is more than what most people would earn this year. Florists thrive, jacking up prices thrice over once the season peaks. They are a part of the spectrum that also includes service providers like henna specialists and bartenders, celebrities in their own right. Take Usha Nath Shah, a henna expert in Mumbai, who charges anything from Rs 3,000 to Rs 1 lakh per bridal for the whole family. Nath's celebrity customers include Kajol, Suzanne Khan, even Demi Moore and Michael Jackson. When the season waltzes by, Nath does at least 1,000 hands a day, ably supported by a staff of 45. It adds up to a tidy sum.

Cover Story All in the Game Performers Shah Rukh Khan, Rs 10-15 lakh Daler Mehndi, Rs 13-15 lakh Shiamak Davar, Rs 9.5-12 lakh Raveena Tandon, Rs 4.5 lakh Malkit Singh, Rs 3.5 lakh Anamika, Rs 3.5 lakh Javed Jaaferi, Rs 2.5 lakh + Mika, Rs 1 lakh New Entertainers Flamenco dancers, up to Rs 1 lakh Belly dancers, Rs 45,000-65,000 Ballet dancers, Rs 40,000-60,000 Caricaturists, Rs 25,000 Face painters, Rs 10,000 Rough estimate for an evening performance HOT FARE: Spanish hostess and dancer Tanya at a sangeet function in Delhi

The accent on exclusivity, specialisation and manic attention to detail has spawned professions in an industry where people wouldn't have dared put in money earlier. Take Edgar Noordanus, 31, who came to India from Australia five years ago. Then, "everybody was on Bloody Marys and Screwdrivers". Today, his company, Cocktails, specialising in setting up tequila bars at weddings, is much sought after. Business is so good-Rs 5,000-10,000 a night, with a wedding a day during the season-that Noordanus will never leave Delhi.

"Everybody makes money," says Delhi-based hair stylist and make-up artist Ambika Pillai. She is no exception. During peak season, her salon dresses up as many as 40 brides a day, churning out Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai clones by the dozen and charging no less than Rs 7,000 an hour. Kolkata make-up hand Prabir Kumar De says girls go to great lengths explaining that not just any Madhuri look will do. It would have to be "exactly the way she looked in the Didi tera dewar deewana number in Hum Aapke Hain Koun".

For the ra-ra set, pre- and post-wedding ceremonies-in stately farmhouses, banquet halls of five-star hotels like the Taj Palace and dance floors of discotheques like Djinns in Delhi-have multiplied. Delhi caterer Amit Dua laments he has to often think up seven different cuisines a day for the same guests. People insist on "kiwi fruits and black cherries from Australia, leechies from Bangkok, and honeydew from Kabul". For as much as Rs 2,500 per head, an evening's spread can run into lakhs and the maitre d' has no choice but to innovate with astonishing regularity. The all-essential spice is variety. Liveried bearers, cut glasses and authentic chefs from Lucknow, Bangkok or Timbuktu add up.

REGAL SETTING: Haveli-like pandals or fort replicas erected for weddings are the favoured setting in Mumbai

In conservative Chennai, Shivakumar of Nala Catering Service Centre even puts up 24-hour cafes at venues, alongside hitherto unheard of dinosaur and camel vegetable carvings at the reception counter. In Kolkata, families are increasingly going in for multi-venue weddings, adding sangeets, cocktails and mehndi ceremonies to the wedding sequence. "They want a hall that looks like a chateau or a dining area that is a replica of a Rajasthani haveli," says wedding planner Biswanath Roy. In rustic Jaipur, theatre and poetry sessions are replacing music concerts. All of a sudden, shaadi lawns in Bhopal and marriage palaces in Ludhiana have become profitable business ventures. Over 80 such halls in Ludhiana cost from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh for an evening.

There are other ways to entertain. For a wedding splash at the Hotel Regent in Mumbai in March, Shaadionline offered its webcasting services complete with an anchor, compere, voice-overs and live interviews "for relatives unable to attend". It cost the bride's brother Vikash Verma, director of a security agency in Mumbai, Rs 75,000, but "what the heck, it was like watching a movie on the cable". Live interviews with guests, Shah Rukh, Shekhar Suman and Laloo Yadav among others, ensured the video is "still in great demand" with friends.

FLIGHT OF FANCY: Bangalore's Deccan Aviation Centre offers honeymoon hampers in choppers for a steep Rs 1.15-4 lakh

For the more adventurous, the market has more ideas. At the Jakkur airstrip in Bangalore, it is not unusual to see flower-bedecked helicopters. The Deccan Aviation Centre plies an Ecstasy Honeymoon Hamper for newlyweds who are flown to destinations like Coorg and Kochi in choppers. A flight of fancy, including meals, can cost a steep Rs 1.15-4 lakh, but Captain G.R. Gopinath of Deccan Aviation says he has managed to generate considerable interest. Another concept, unique to Ludhiana in Punjab is "limo marriages". The bridegroom leads the baraat in a swank six-door, air-conditioned limousine. It all started when Harminder Singh, who ran a taxi business in Toronto, returned to Punjab two years ago. The marriage market spurred him to import a second-hand limousine from Canada and rent it out for weddings. Singh now has two, and Ludhiana, four limos. The per-day charges for a flower-swept limo can be anything upwards of Rs 12,000.

Clearly, it's the stuff that would enthuse the Guinness Book of Records. "No other industry boasts of so many social events in a succession," says Hitesh Kumar, one of the directors of Bridal Affairs, wedding management consultants since August this year. For a new entrant, Bridal Affairs is already booked for "over 125 weddings" during the year. Numbers matter. Says Kumar: "An average wedding would cost about Rs 5 lakh. In the premium segment, it costs about Rs 2-5 crore. Imagine what that would add up to." The sum certainly speaks for the enthusiasm in the industry. Little wonder, Bridal Affairs is already talking advertising budgets for the following year. The potential is such that "Indian universities may start offering courses on wedding management", says Gupta.

The NRI market is also a sizeable treasure trove for bridal entrepreneurs. Jyoti Soni, a wedding coordinator who started Celebrations in New Jersey two years ago, makes biannual trips to India to source props and do her own bit of market research. If the need arises, Soni even flies down priests and henna specialists to the US all the way from Mumbai and often airlifts performers like Sonu Nigam and Kumar Sanu whose charges hover at Rs 7.2 lakh for three hours.

With money as plentiful as confetti, the challenge is to innovate. In this celebration industry, the demand to make ostentation memorable is the ultimate high. After all wedding is the only industry where recession hasn't crashed the party.

-with Himanshi Dhawan, Kavitha Muralidharan, Ramesh Vinayak, Stephen David, Rohit Parihar, Labonita Ghosh and Neeraj Mishra