- Names: There is Marry Me Wedding, the DivyaVithika Troupe and the Big Indian Wedding to name but a few.
A slew of start-ups are helping couples create perfect proposals
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For that most celebratory of moments, when he was about to propose to “the girl who caused butterflies to flutter in my stomach every time I saw her,” M.S. Srinath corralled the help of an army of complete strangers. “I wanted it to be a special occasion, so that morning, when I met Lakshmi at the beach, I gave her a box with a hundred live butterflies, which fluttered out when she opened it,” recalls Srinath. The gift box of a family of arthropods had been put together by the6.in, one of the new crop of agencies offering unique ‘proposal planning’ services for those who want to ‘pop the question’ in elaborate style.
In Srinath’s case, the ‘proposal’ routine to get Lakshmi to say “I will” stretched all day: lunch, a movie (which ended with a flash mob performance centred around her), and dinner by candlelight—at which guitarists played their favourite songs.
It’s fair to say that Lakshmi was swept off her feet. Which is the effect Srinath wanted to have; the Rs 40,000 he paid the agency for the full-day proposal planning was, he reckons, well worth it.
Like wedding planners, who help put together elaborate and personalised weddings, proposal planners are helping young lovers—and even those opting for arranged marriages—make a big ceremony of the first stage. For anything between Rs 10,000 and a few, these agencies will, in collaboration with one or the other of the parties (no, it’s not always the man who takes the lead), plan out the big day’s routine, punctuated with personalised touches; like wanting to propose mid-air or under the Eiffel like Candice Pereira from Marry Me Weddings has done. “We sit down with the boy or girl, listen to their love story —how they met, their favourite movies, their likes and dislikes—and plan a proposal,” say Vithika Agarwal and Divya Chauhan, co-founders of DivyaVithika, a proposal planning agency. For one of their clients, they lined up an event at the Thar desert; trained puppeteers enacted the couple’s story, at the end of which the boy proposed, and she said ‘yes’.
Shakti Vel and Radhakrishnan, who co-founded the6.in, say the proposal-planning market may be nascent in India, but it is booming: their own operations have expanded from Chennai to Madurai to Coimbatore to Bangalore in double-quick time and are now ready to set shop in Singapore. And strikingly, many of their clients are women. For instance, Saritha Nagarajan felt compelled to propose to her boyfriend because she knew he wasn’t expressive enough to take the lead. On Valentine’s Day this year, she lined up a full day of events: a yacht ride, a flash mob outside a temple, a movie (where, during the intermissions, dancers performed for them in the foyer), dinner by candlelight (with violinists playing his favourite songs). And then she proposed. His shyness cost her Rs 60,000.
The drama over the proposal wasn’t always a part of the ethos of Indian weddings. “It was largely a western trend, but a lot of people have taken to it,” points out Devika Patel, director of business development at Indear.in, which offers wedding planning services. Some of this trend may be a domino effect of seeing others in your age group do it, reasons Ashish Abrol, CEO of Big Indian Wedding. For now, about a tenth of his clients have proposal planning enquiries.
People opting for arranged marriages are also infusing a bit of drama into the proposal. Take Maalica Ravikumar, for instance. “I wanted the whole proposal experience, so I booked our regular coffee house for just the two of us, had friends walk in with gifts and flowers,” she recalls. In the end, it’s about having a proposal that they will remember for a long time. “Everyone asks how one proposed, and you don’t want it to be too plain,” says Janavi Singh. Besides, what will you post on FB and WhatsApp?