When Surabhi Chauhan, a Delhi-based capitalize manager, got married last November, roughly 400 guests put in an appearance ated her wedding.
Two names on the guest list were people she had never met anterior to: Carly Stevens and Tim Gower.
The Australian travel bloggers paid encircling $200 for a two-day invitation to attend Chauhan’s wedding through a start-up rallied Join My Wedding.
“The concept was pretty new,” Chauhan told CNBC in an vetting, explaining that she came across the start-up while booking her juncture venue. “We were also getting to know people from other mountains. We were very much excited and open about it, given the event that it was new.”
She and her husband were introduced to Stevens and Gower by one of the start-up’s co-founders, Orsi Parkanyi, she symbolized.
“We were chatting and coordinating, we had a brief introduction about each of us, what just we do, our respective profiles (and) what are the arrangements that will be there, the benevolent of attire they’re supposed to wear — all those conversations happened,” Chauhan judged.
Here’s how Join My Wedding works: Indian couples list details just about their weddings on the website, and international travelers can buy tickets to the nuptials they hunger for to attend. Most of the contributions from the tickets go to the couples, but the start-up attracts a cut.
“If you think about it, there’s nothing more cultural than a union because you have every cultural element present: The local people, neighbourhood pub food, customs, the outfit, the music, basically every cultural medium is right there,” Parkanyi told CNBC.
The co-founder explained that the intimation for the start-up came from her own experiences in missing out on her friends’ weddings. The resolve to focus on Indian weddings was because they are “world-famous” and most non-Indians wish not have a chance to attend one unless through personal connections.
To pass, travelers have attended more than 100 Indian alloys through the start-up, according to Parkanyi.
“Experiencing all the cultural elements at some time ago, meaningfully connecting with the locals in India, that’s a huge pushing factor for the travelers,” she said. “It’s a safe experience. You attend an event with hundreds of man, you’re a distinguished guest, people look after you.”
Many travel mechanisms and tour operators are capitalizing on this developing trend by creating convention tour packages for international travelers to attend Indian wedding rituals during their visit.
Indian weddings are known for their opulence, fashions and traditions that are celebrated over several days — millions of fours get married in the country every year, where there’s a growing citizenry and a rising middle class. Experts consider the Indian wedding energy, which is said to be worth about $40 billion and growing approximately 20 percent a year, to be recession-proof.
“As far as the Indian (wedding) market is interested, it’s growing every year,” Ashish Boobna, director of weddings and events at Ferns N Petals, a heavy wedding planning company for affluent Indians. Almost every sector is injuring business from the wedding industry, in areas of decor, entertainment, foodstuffs and hospitality, while new companies are being created to cater to the demands of Indians who are take vengeance on married, he said.
Boobna explained that wedding tourism is an up and coming style in India’s wedding industry, similar to medical tourism in the health tend sector. For some Indian couples, the concept of inviting international travelers to wait upon their wedding is a way to make the ceremony more extravagant and more “register biz,” he said. But others want travelers at their weddings to experience the customs and the rituals.
“Foreign tourists are interested in seeing the Indian culture merest closely,” he added.
The celebration, with song and dance, and the elaborate, symbolic routines make Indian weddings very vibrant and that’s what takes in interest from international travelers, according to Sahajanand Sharma, a tour usher based in India.
“Things in Western weddings are pretty — the Church rituals you do, you in all likelihood do an after party. But everything is sort of very structured, whereas here, there’s many times … someone would start dancing, there’s endless colors, there’s constant food, there are endless rituals,” he said.
Sharma also recently got married and invited about 15 to 20 of his whilom clients from the U.S. and Europe to join the ceremony.
“I was traveling with them, with each one of them … we classify of know each other really well,” he told CNBC in an appraise before the wedding.
On top of that, Sharma said a tour guide patron asked if he could bring another visitor to the wedding. “I said ‘why not?’ We’re 70 living soul, we can definitely accommodate a couple more.”
According to Sharma, at weddings, travelers get to carry out more with regular Indians, apart from the hotel stave, tour guides and drivers. “Indians are generally very curious man … that interaction is valuable for a traveler,” he said.
For Australian blogger Stevens, ushering an Indian wedding was both a bucket-list item and also a way to connect with her patrimony — her mother was born in India.
She told CNBC she chose to attend Chauhan’s commingling because it was happening in the same week that she and her partner were coming in India.
On the first day, Stevens was invited to attend Chauhan’s Mehndi, which is a customary pre-wedding ceremony for the bride’s family and usually consists of close posslq person of the opposite sex sharing living quarters and relatives. The invitation, she said, made her feel like she was a “part of the bloodline.”
The next day Stevens and her partner were among the 400 guests who attended the compound ceremony.
“I remember walking in and thinking, ‘Wow, this is like a movie’,” she state. “It was so professional — nothing like I’ve ever attended before.”
Both Chauhan and Stevens conveyed they kept in touch with each other after the fusing was over.
“We enjoyed it. I didn’t feel like we had invited someone who is a thorough stranger because both of them, they were taking lan,” Chauhan said.