Bunty Weds Babli In Bali

***

Sonia, Priyanka at Paswan's daughter's wedding

The backdrop could be the Versailles Palace or the Egyptian pyramids, Udaipur's Lake Palace or a beach resort in Bali. A young couple, decked out in clothes dripping with pearls and crystals, on which sweatshop workers have laboured for a year, pledge their eternal commitment to each other. Witnessing the event is a multi-starrer cast of spectators—political bigwigs, transnational tycoons, film stars, socialites and models. On cue, Himesh Reshammiya's nasal squeak booms out of large speakers, Bollywood stars take to the stage, and TV cameras from channels across the world whir into action.

Welcome to the Big Fat Indian Wedding—an event that is no longer just about the alliance between two families and two people, but an exercise in branding, in recreating your image. It's the ultimate in PR—offering networking with the powerful, rich and famous, international media coverage, jetset glamour and glitter, a deafening statement about your wealth and status, and a buzz that crores worth of advertising space would never get you.

Who is S.P. Lohia? You had probably not heard of him, but after a dazzling December weekend in Bali, the name of this Indonesia-based owner of a textile and petrochemicals company called IndoRama is sure to ring a bell. Lohia threw an incredible wedding bash for his only daughter, Shruti, in the island resort town. The guests included 800 people from across the globe, and the host booked nearly all the fancy hotels and taxi fleets in Bali for his guests. It was all impeccably organised, with meticulous attention to detail—like providing Mercedes Benzes for the most favoured guests. The guests at the bottom of the pecking order, like the Indian media, didn't rate a Mercedes to go shopping and sightseeing, but they weren't complaining—their invitation cards included air tickets, free hotel stay and attendance at half-a-dozen glittering events.

Celebrity chefs and Bollywood's most-sought-after set designers were also flown in. Each night saw a specially themed decor—Arabian Nights for the mehndi, Indonesian for the wedding ceremony and Manhattan for the pre-wedding cocktails and dinner. Fountains in the shape of giant lotuses lined the red carpet walkway, and spectacular fireworks lit up the Balinese sky. A sudden and heavy rainstorm derailed a performance by singer Sukhvinder, but there was a swiftly-arranged sequel the next day. (Money can't buy the weather, but it can sure make up for bad weather.)

Manmohan Singh at the Chatwal do

The highlight was, of course, the inevitable Bollywood Night with a top star cast—Sushmita Sen, Kareena Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Salman Khan, Lara Dutta and Akshay Kumar dancing for the guests. The sets that evening were done up like a movie theatre, and for those like this correspondent, seated near the back, there were huge plasma screens projecting the action on stage. Outside, one of Bali's most famous bartenders whipped up margaritas for whoever was interested.

But the hottest part of the Lohia wedding was certainly not the bride and groom—who were just bit players—or even the stars. It was the presence of the bride's uncle—a certain Laxmi Niwas Mittal. For many fellow guests their Bali sojourn was, more than anything else, an unmissable opportunity to bond with him.

Aditya Burman (Dabur), Shivani Sood at their sangeet

Mittal who?—you would have probably asked a few years ago. He may have been the "richest Indian in the world", but it was not until his daughter's wedding in 2004 that he really got noticed in a popular sort of way. The international media buzzed with details of that extravaganza—the romantic setting in the 17th century chateau Vaux le Viconte in France, the wedding invitation made out of solid silver, music by Shankar Mahadevan and choreographed by Farah Khan, trousseau by Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla and Tarun Tahiliani. There was even a topnotch international performer—Kylie Minogue—and enough Bollywood glamour to dazzle the most jaded jetsetters—Shahrukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Akshay Kumar. Mittal, and industrialist Subroto Roy of Sahara, can be credited with creating the template for how to really throw a big fat Global Indian Wedding. Humbler tycoons like Lohia, and NRI hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal, have clearly been inspired by them. And the big wedding tamashas on the horizon—Ash-Abhishek, Liz Hurley-Arun Nayar—will no doubt borrow an idea or two.

The Hurley-Nayar wedding is already tabloid fodder, and for a couple famous mainly for being famous, that's hardly bad news. The Indian playboy is only in the news because he's marrying the British actress, whose main claim to fame, let's face it, is that she's Hugh Grant's ex. But after their wedding in March, there will be more than one reason to remember them. In a trailer to the big do, Hurley and Nayar threw an extravagant bash last year, booking a chartered plane and flying everyone to the Devi Garh Palace hotel in Rajasthan. At the end of the glorious weekend came the reality check: rumour has it that the lucky ones who were invited were presented with grand bills—for the to and fro flight and their weekend stay at the hotel.

Subhash Goyal, L.N. Mittal and Subhash Ghai at a wedding reception

The wedding itself may not have such shocks in store. Sources told Outlook that the entire event is to be sponsored by product endorsements, and by a magazine that will get exclusive footage of it. During the Indian part of the wedding, to be held over three days in Udaipur, Hurley will make 13 dress changes, wearing 13 different designer gowns. She will arrive on an elephant (apparently, she is taking lessons on how to ride one) and Nayar on a white horse. Guests (including the Beckhams and Elton John) will get a tour of Rajasthan and will be put up at Udaipur's Lake Palace (where the James Bond flick Octopussy was shot; and some of the Chatwal wedding events were hosted as well) and at the Oberoi Udaivilas resort (at $1,000 a night these are among the priciest hotel rooms in India.) Suites have also been booked at Devi Garh for the couple and their families.

Such weddings are, of course, too important and too complicated to be left to parents or even run-of-the-mill wedding planners. Only a top-notch event management company will do. One phone call and it all begins to fall into place. Uh, we mean one phone call and lots and lots of money—the commission charged is often 10 to 15 per cent of the entire cost. Says Samit Garg, CEO of E-factor, the company that handled the Lohia wedding, smugly: "We have the unfortunate reputation of being the most expensive wedding planners in India. " Though they mostly do corporate events, they "choose" to do about three or four weddings a year, most of them 'destination weddings' in exotic locales. Then there's high-profile wedding manager Meher Sarid, who recently organised a big wedding in Jaipur which had international pop star Ricky Martin perform at a reported fee of Rs 5 crore. Why Ricky Martin? Because, explains Sarid patiently, the guests came from all over the world and "they won't identify with a Sukhbir or a Sukhvinder". Right.

Shiamak Davar performs in Bali

No one can say it's easy money for the event managers and wedding planners. At the Lohia wedding, E-Factor had plenty to do—apart from separate parties on each of the four nights, there were two daytime events as well—a Ganesh puja featuring an enormous Ganesh made entirely of flowers, and a sangeet, with playback singer Richa Sharma of Mahi Ve fame singing endlessly. There were also diwans laid out with gifts like shirts, bangles and handcrafted Indonesian kites as party favours for the guests.

Says Parthip Thyagarajan, director of weddingsutra.com, a wedding planning portal and services company, "Favours are very important now. What is traditional has to be packaged in a very contemporary way. Such as India Kits, namely bags with assorted giveaways like bangles, a little book on the city where the wedding is happening, a scarf to be used as a saafa, a dupatta that can double as a stole, and a little book on the wedding, detailing the significance of the functions."

Event managers need other skills as well, because the Big Fat Indian Wedding is becoming an excuse to travel. It's not enough just to send out silver-plated invitations and champagne truffle chocolates—you need to dangle the prospect of a "destination wedding": an exotic foreign locale, or at least Rajasthan, or Goa or Amby Valley. The functions at hotelier Sant Chatwal's son Vikram's wedding to Delhi-based model Priya Sachdev took place at venues across Mumbai, Udaipur and Delhi, each more posh than the next, to wow a large contingent of overseas guests that famously included Bill Clinton.

Amitabh and Abhishek at the wedding reception of Sahara’s Subroto Roy

In an interview to Discovery Travel and Living, which telecast a special programme on their wedding, bride Priya explained why: "Vikram wanted his friends to really feel India." Said Chatwal senior, in the same programme: "We promised him the biggest and the best Indian wedding in India." Ironically, this is the same Chatwal who'd previously pleaded bankruptcy in a case against him by the CBI, for defrauding the New York branch of the State Bank of India. But did that matter to the guests? "This is the most elaborate wedding I've ever been to," squealed supermodel Saira Mohan ecstatically on the show.

The Big Fat Indian Wedding has its critics, of course. "It's the worst global export of India," adman Suhel Seth exclaims. "It's obscene and vulgar. We need to get guest control back, and weddings where people can actually get to see the bride and groom. It's not a style statement, it's a stature misstatement, which lacks all finesse and style. Getting Bollywood stars to your wedding shows an appalling lack of pedigree." But the trend of stars dancing at Bollywood weddings has taken off in a big way, ever since Shahrukh decided a few years ago that it was OK to do it. The justification he gave: "We are performers... bhand hain hum." Today, it's no big deal to get a star, if you have the lolly. Bollywood sources list the rates for having the stars dance at your wedding. SRK: Rs 1 crore; lesser stars like Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra: Rs 50-60 lakh; Bollywood also-rans like Mahima Chowdhary, for whom wedding performances have become an alternative career: Rs 8-10 lakh (Aamir Khan, Amitabh, Abhishek and Ajay Devgun are among the few who do not accept such assignments).

Captain Satish Sharma at a wedding party

Not many Indians can afford to sign up Bollywood stars, or fly off to Bali, but they can at least adapt a few big ideas to their more modest budgets, and outdo their neighbours in lavishness. Much to the delight of the wedding industry, spending is up, even among the middle classes, on decor, makeup, fashion, photography and entertainment. The Indian wedding has become a burgeoning industry, estimated at $11 billion a year, and growing at 25 per cent annually. And this does not count jewellery sales, which are growing at 7% annually, and are projected to reach $280 billion by 2015.

Wedding Tourism too is a fast growing industry—not just NRIs but also foreigners are flocking to India to get themselves a flashy wedding, which comes cheaper here than anywhere else. Hiring an entire fort in Rajasthan for a weekend could cost less than a fancy banquet in New York. What better way for NRIs to impress their foreign workmates and college pals, who've flown down for the wedding? What better way for a foreign bridal couple to feel like royalty? A wedding planning company reported among their recent foreign clients couples as diverse as a nightclub bouncer and cafe manager, a radiologist and a journalist, who treated themselves to a package complete with horse, elephant, band, mehndi and sangeet, trousseau, and honeymoon in Kerala. "Every elite needs a form of excess," says Shiv Visvanathan of the Centre for Study of Developing Societies. "It's not enough just to have club memberships or trips abroad. There is an anthropological term for it called potlatch, where the rich gave away their wealth in certain tribes as an expression of what they have."

The scent of money in India's wedding industry is attractive enough to have drawn even management school graduates into this fast growing market. Like Jairaj Gupta, a graduate of BITS Pilani and IIM, Calcutta, who drifted into wedding planning with the launch of his website, shaadionline.com, which started as an online wedding store, and then gradually became a planning portal. Gupta charges a flat fee of about Rs 2.5 lakhs for organising weddings, which means that even well-off professional couples can seek out his services. But listen to what he thinks is reasonable. "Within fifty lakhs, you could have a decent budget wedding," he says casually, leaving us somewhat slack-jawed.
 

By Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan with inputs from Payal Kapadia, Ravina Rawal and Lata Khubchandani