Dear Friends:
This story is from the NY Times this evening (April 6, 2012). I suppose in U.K. the things are a little different.Here the wedding ceremonies in billionaires' families will be in a special category while the weddings of ordinary families like mine are managed by the family itself. -bhuban Hindu Wedding Planners Thrive in the United States By SHIVANI VORA Courtesy of Sonal ShahRachna Krishan in an orange bridal outfit and Jordan Newmark, to her left, with their family and friends at their wedding in 2011, at the Ritz-Carlton in California. When I got married almost 10 years ago, it was my parents and I who orchestrated the week-long affair, a “medium-sized” Indian affair spread over various venues in Manhattan and New Jersey, involving more than 450 guests from as a far away as Hong Kong, New Delhi and Germany. The year of tension-filled planning it took to put it together was punctuated with heated arguments and littered with to-do lists that never seemed to get finished. I tried reaching out to several well-known Manhattan wedding planners located in the Upper East Side, Chelsea and the West Village for help and quickly realized that I was better off on my own. One planner, for example, assured me that she was well-versed with Hindu weddings and then proceeded to suggest that beef curry would make an ideal entrée choice. When I explained to another that it was customary that the bride and groom touch the priest’s and parents feet after the ceremony, she commented that it sounded like a demeaning ritual and asked if it was really necessary. Luckily, Indian brides and grooms will fare much better today if they need professional help — in the past several years, a cottage industry of wedding planners specializing in Indian affairs has sprung up around the country. Some are freelance planners working out of their homes, others are full-blown companies with multiple staff. Some are not even Indian, others, such as the Washington D.C.-based Working Brides, plan Western and South Asian weddings but usually have an Indian planner handling the Indian side. Weddings are a significant event for anyone, but in Indian culture, of course, they take on a heightened level of importance. Parents often shop for their daughters’ trousseau from the time they are born, and spend a sizable chunk of their life savings on the celebration. It’s not a marriage between two people, but between two families, which can mean complicated juggling of the expectations and traditions of both. One of big-ticket Indian wedding specialists in New York City is Sonal J. Shah Event Consultants. Like all of the planners interviewed for this article, Ms. Shah started her business after seeing the need in the wedding market for a professional who was adept with Indian culture. At first, she said, Indians didn’t want to pay for a wedding planner. “It was a hard sell because Indians took pride in doing it themselves,” she said. To help build her business, she started off charging just a few thousand dollars to oversee intricate multiple-day events which required several months of work. Eventually, word spread about her services, and today, she plans 30 weddings a year around the country and in international destinations such as Bali and the Cayman Islands. She charges $10,000 to $25,000 per wedding, depending on her level of involvement and has a full-time staff of three, plus 10 interns and freelance planners to help her for larger affairs. The average wedding she plans costs between $100,000 and $200,000, she said, although a few stretch to the half-million dollar mark. Courtesy of Sonal ShahA canopy decorated with flowers and draped with colorful fabric, part of the décor at Rachna Krishan and Jordan Newmark’s wedding, in Ritz-Carlton, California. Couples who hire her are usually busy professionals with time constraints, she said. Rachna Krishan, 32, and Jordan Newmark, 30, for example, looked to Ms. Shah to oversee their wedding last May at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California. Both are doctors working long hours and say that hiring a planner was a necessity. “I was the pseudo planner for my brother’s wedding and had to take time off work to do everything for it and was exhausted,” Ms. Krishan said. When it was her turn to get married, her parents were very receptive to hiring outside help, especially given her work schedule. Besides sourcing and managing vendors in California, and incorporating Mr. Newmark’s Jewish traditions, such as the couple stepping on a glass at the end of the ceremony for good luck, Shah acted as a buffer between Ms. Krishan and her father. “My dad was the one paying for everything and when we disagreed on how much to spend on certain things, Sonal helped us mitigate over conference calls,” Ms. Krishan said. Ms. Shah charged $15,000 for her help, which the couple say was money well spent. “You can’t put a price on enjoying your wedding day and not getting caught up in logistical details,” Mr. Newmark said. Having a good time at their own party was also a top priority for New York City-based couple Anita Gupta, 30, who works in real-estate, and Krishnan Padmananbhan, 32, who is a lawyer. “It might be Western to think that the bride and groom should be able to have fun at their wedding, but it was really important to us,” said Ms. Gupta. The couple wed last May at the Ritz-Carlton in Grand Cayman and hired Preeti Shah [no relation to Sonal] for help. Ms. Shah, 35, owns Spotlight Style, which is also based in New York City, and has planned weddings for celebrities including Jets football player D’Brickashaw Ferguson before she entered the Indian market. She charges $20,000 to $50,000 to help couples with their dream day. Ms. Gupta says that spending the money to hire Ms. Shah was crucial for a stress-free experience. Besides taking charge of every detail and handling minor quibbles she had with her father along the way, Ms. Shah also understood Indian culture. Ms. Gupta recalls one guest becoming enraged when a server at the wedding dinner told her that they had run out of the vegetarian option. “Only an Indian wedding planner would understand the gravity of not having a veggie meal available to a guest and work fast to fix it,” she said. Courtesy of Preeti Shah/1000 Words StudiosThe décor at a reception organized by wedding planner Preeti Shah at Cipriani Downtown, New York City in 2011. The weddings Ms. Shah plans tend to be lavish, and several run easily into the seven figures, she said. Last year, for instance, she planned a seven-day extravaganza in New York City that cost more than $2 million, the wedding of two professionals, one the daughter of a doctor. Highlights included a welcome reception at Indian-fusion restaurant Vermilion, a mehndi (henna ceremony) and sangeet (a pre-wedding dinner with music and dancing) at Chelsea Piers, the ceremony at Broad Street Ballroom and the reception at Cipriani Downtown where the décor alone was $650,000 and 30 eight-foot tall centerpieces were suspended from the ceiling. Courtesy of Sonal ShahBridegroom Jeremy Thaden rides a horse on his wedding day in the traditional Indian way. Mr. Thaden married Mansi Kanuga in 2011, they hired Sonal J. Shah Event Consultants to plan their wedding. Part of Wall Street was shut down for the baraat (the groom’s party) who danced their way past the Stock Exchange with the groom riding on a white horse. The 100 out of town guests were put up at the Carlton Hotel on the Upper East Side, and the bride’s parents not only paid for incidentals such as laundry and in-room movies but also rented out two penthouse suites which were staffed with chefs 24 hours a day. “If you wanted masala chai at three in the morning, a chef was there to make you a fresh mug,” Ms. Shah said. More Indians in the U.S. might be hiring professionals like Ms. Shah, but my parents still aren’t one of them. I suggested to my mother that we call on some reinforcements when it comes to planning my sister’s wedding. Clearly having forgotten her stress levels from a decade ago, she jumped on me. “What do we need to hire a planner for,” she asked. “We did ourselves before, and we can do it ourselves again, but even better this time around.” Planners for Hire: Spotlight Style, spotlightstyle.com Sonal J. Shah Event Consultants, sjsevents.com Tanari Events, www.tanarievents.com Planning Elegance, www.planningelegance.com Working Brides, www.workingbrides.com _______________________________________________ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
